Evaluating run-time resource management policies for multi-core embedded platforms with the EMME evaluation framework

Abstract

Toady's embedded computing electronic products are based on multi-core platforms and they are capable to concurrently execute different applications. For these products it is of paramount importance that a Run-time Resource Management (RRM) system integrated in the Operating System (OS) arbiters about resource allocation to the active applications. The RRM should take decisions at run-time to maximize platform performance and minimizing non-functional costs such as power consumption or memory requirements. However, embedded system design covers a broad range of applications and the customer requirements are very different depending on the target device. In general there is not an unique RRM that best fits in all possible embedded scenarios. This paper presents the EMME Evaluation Framework, an open source tool that provides a methodology and the accompanying infrastructure to quickly explore the effects of different RRM systems for a target use case scenario. The tool aims at the analysis of different figures of merit of the system being designed such as the applications' response time, system throughput and power consumption. Different RRM modules are released with the framework. These modules implement different RRM policies that define how to allocate computing resources to the active applications while fitting in a power budget that is assumed assigned by other layers of the OS.