Real World Multicore Embedded Systems: Chapter 6. Operating Systems in Multicore Platforms

An operating system (OS) is an important component of most computer systems. At a minimum, the OS is responsible for managing tasks and resources. This becomes more challenging in a multicore environment, where multiple tasks can execute concurrently and must vie for shared resources. So the OS configuration is a critical consideration when building a multicore system. This chapter describes the different ways one or more OSes can be instantiated in multicore systems, along with many of the more critical controls that architects and programmers have for customizing the behavior of the OS. Included is a discussion of some of the debugging tools that are often shipped with OSes.