A simultaneous multithreading processor architecture with predictable timing behavior

Abstract

Real-time embedded systems need software and hardware to be time-predictable to guarantee the correct behavior of the system. Precision Timed Machines are architectures designed for timing predictability and repeatability. They help to improve design time and the efficiency of real-time embedded systems by allowing to separately verify the timing properties of modules. This paper presents a Simultaneous Multithreading Precision Timed Machine named Hivek-RT that can execute hard real-time and conventional threads in parallel. It employs a repeatable thread-interleaved pipeline with an exposed memory hierarchy composed of scratchpads, caches, and a predictable SDRAM memory controller. The proposed architecture is well suited for real-time embedded systems as experimentation results show that the proposed architecture has improved throughput, presents low memory footprint and achieve a memory bandwidth of 90% of the theoretical value while providing deterministic time access to the memory hierarchy. This paper is an extended version of the paper presented on the 8th Brazilian Symposium on Computing Systems Engineering.