tools to study real time scheduling in embedded systems

Question

I worked with GEM5 software simulator where I had the task to change the linux kernel according to the scheduling algorithm that I want to use. No I want to switch to the embedded systems my target is a real time signal processing on altera FPGA (or any platform). I am new in this domain I read many topics in this forum but I still confuse about some points:

• Does all embedded RTOS support multicores, if no what is the more suitable ? I heard about embedded linux but I don't have a clear idea.
• About parallel programming library from what I learn from this forum posix thread is more suitable since it is fine grained, I am right ?
• my choice for FPGA is not final I want to know if there is other software tools simulator for embedded systems like GEM5.

Answer 1

Does all embedded RTOS support multicores, if no what is the more suitable ? I heard about embedded linux but I don't have a clear idea.

No, not all support multi-cores. In fact many do not.

About parallel programming library from what I learn from this forum posix thread is more suitable since it is fine grained, I am right ?

Depends entirely on the application. You can read lots about parallel programming - try for example here: http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/nmm1/Parallel/index.html

my choice for FPGA is not final I want to know if there is other software tools simulator for embedded systems like GEM5.

That I have no idea on, I've never used GEM5.

Answer 2

Not many Embedded RTOS support multicore (SMP or AMP) architecture. But there are few like VxWorks( http://www.windriver.com/products/vxworks/ ) which has support for multicore processors. VxWorks is Linux at the core with modified scheduling and light weight processes.

If you are going to use multicore processor and RTOS(with multicore support) then you will need parallel processing POSIX libs for efficient utilization of the hardware.

There is nothing like GEM5 for FPGA besides there are not many processor options for FPGA. I mean Xilinx and Altera FPGAs supports only one or two types of soft/hard processor cores.

Xilinx recently switched to ARM from PowerPC and Altera still uses niosII processor(proprietary) and only ARM has multicore processor cores out of two.