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Summary
Multicore systems, devices that combine two or more cores on a single processor, are quickly becoming a defacto platform in the embedded computing industry.
In the industrial world, a number of automation suppliers have embraced these embedded "systems on a chip" hardware and software platforms to increase the performance and functionality of their controller products and smart field devices, while helping shrink form factors and reduce energy consumption. This approach not only helps increase the competitiveness of their offerings, it also reduces product development time and effort (and associated costs), and thus, time-to-market.
In industrial automation and industrial IoT applications, these new-generation multicore system on a chip (SoC) architectures typically include homogeneous core types. Increasingly, however, they combine heterogeneous cores; that is, cores of different types such as application cores and microcontroller cores. Systems leveraging these new SoCs must often accommodate different types of processors and operating systems, both real-time and non-real-time; deterministic and non-deterministic. This requires new and comprehensive software development, debug, and deployment solutions. Mentor Graphics -- a design automation company to the electronic products industry and a leading provider of embedded software, open source tools, real-time operating systems, graphical user interfaces, and professional services -- offers comprehensive embedded solutions for industrial automation suppliers designed to address the unique requirements of heterogeneous multicore systems.
From Single-core to Multicore to Heterogeneous Multicore Design
Many industrial devices today, such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and programmable automation controllers (PACs), include either single-core or multicore processor architectures. Single-core designs are the norm when embedded devices are built to do one function only. However, with the increased requirements for local user interfaces (UIs), more connectivity options, and higher data throughput rates to meet today's business requirements, designers continue to transition to multicore designs.
Continued advancements in embedded multicore technology allow the industrial device developer to more easily combine disparate functionalities (such as discrete control, process control, motion control, communications, and UI) in a single device, add new features, implement robust security, support legacy applications, and move toward field-configurable devices to increase asset lifecycles. But, as expected, embedded developers are discovering that, though these powerful SoC capabilities enable unprecedented levels of consolidation, complex product and system development challenges must be addressed.
Developing Heterogeneous Multicore Systems
Industrial and IoT product developers must address a number of new challenges to fully leverage the benefits of today's SoC solutions.
System Architecture
With a plethora of capabilities on a single system on a chip, there are many options to assign partitions, operating systems, and both secure and non-secure applications to the various processor cores, subsystems and other shared resources. Industrial product developers must determine which, of the many possible configurations can optimally meet the requirements.
Configuration
With an increasing trend toward field-configurable industrial devices, system configuration options, as well as secure boot options, become important both during development and in deployed systems.
Booting
Where multiple operating systems need to boot, often in a particular sequence, the developer needs a framework and method to bring SoC subsystems up in a coordinated manner according to system requirements, while taking into account the shared nature of some SoC components.
Debugging
When consolidating systems, industrial product developers must find a way to view the system as a whole. They must understand how each operating system and application environment is working as well as understand where there might be contention between shared resources or saturation of processors and busses. Tools that help determine how behavior in one part of the system affects, or is affected by, behavior in another part of the system are key. Industrial product developers need a way to optimize the overall performance and characterize the system before deployment in mission-critical applications.
Separation
Reliability is a fundamental design tenet for most industrial products. Thus, the heterogeneous multicore designer needs to be able to ensure that if a subsystem fails, other parts of the consolidated system (including legacy components) or the entire system itself will not be compromised.
Device Sharing
With numerous industrial operating environments and applications consolidated into a single device, the number of hardware interfaces needed to service these functions may be limited, requiring sharing of hardware resources. The architect and developer require methodologies to configure and ensure availability of resources when needed.
Inter-Process Communication (IPC)
Historically, communication in a distributed industrial system comprising many discrete devices was handled by standard interfaces, such as RS-485, Modbus, CAN bus, etc. and/or networking solutions, such as DCOM, OPC-Classic, Ethernet, etc. Converging onto a single SoC requires additional communication strategies based on a robust and secure IPC foundation.
Security
Employing critical security architectures on disparate devices with a common operating environment is challenging enough in its own right. With advanced consolidation through multicore SoC devices and multiple-OS environments, these challenges are compounded.
Mentor Graphics Solutions for Industrial Automation
As ARC Advisory Group learned in a recent briefing, to help meet the above challenges, Mentor Graphics has developed an embedded solution designed to deliver a comprehensive commercial set of runtime environments and tools for heterogeneous multicore development. This solution responds to the needs of industrial automation and IoT product design when developing heterogeneous systems on modern heterogeneous SoC architectures.
System Architecture and Configuration
Mentor Graphics' solutions allow industrial product developers to configure and deploy multiple operating systems and applications across homogeneous and heterogeneous multicore processors. System configuration needs to be done in the context of the system, since these discrete components are now being consolidated onto a single SoC with many shared hardware components.
Simplified Booting
The company provides a set of capabilities to manage booting operating systems and applications across heterogeneous cores. Its multicore offering addresses this through support for the remote processor framework (remoteproc) which can be used for the Mentor Embedded Linux, Nucleus RTOS, and Mentor Embedded Hypervisor products – even "bare metal" implementations in which the application runs directly on the hardware, rather than on a host operating system.
Debugging – Visualization Deep into the System
Characterizing device behavior and isolating and eliminating difficult system anomalies in heterogeneous systems is not within the domain of standard debuggers. The Mentor Embedded Sourcery Analyzer tool is integrated in a way that allows the various operating system and hypervisor runtimes and applications to be visualized on a single common timeline. This provides industrial product developers a system-wide view of how the components are behaving and interact so they can analyze, optimize, and characterize the entire system.
Hypervisor – Separation and Device Sharing
Multicore systems can be designed to be supervised or unsupervised. Supervised systems typically leverage a hypervisor to partition the environments and configure and manage shared resources. The Mentor Embedded Hypervisor provides a small footprint, type-1 solution that is operating system- independent and can support guest operating systems ranging from RTOS, Linux, bare metal and proprietary operating environments.
IPC – Communications
Loosely-coupled distributed industrial systems required communications at the application level over a physical connection, such as serial or Ethernet. With consolidated heterogeneous systems on a single chip, no framework exists to enable communication across heterogeneous components and subsystems. The Mentor Graphics solution enables developers to architect systems with functions that can communicate between open source components and proprietary environments without exposure to open source licensing issues.
Security – Securing and Managing the Device
Many of the latest generation multicore processors offer hardware-based security features including root-of-trust, secure boot, and security acceleration. Equally important is how security events are detected, recorded, audited, and reported. The Mentor platforms are designed to take full advantage of the multicore partitioning and hardware-enforced security to implement advanced security architectures to allow compliance with the IEC 62443 industry cyber security standard.
Customizable Development Tools
Consolidation increasingly includes a mixing of open source and proprietary environments on a single multicore SoC. This requires the development tools, booting mechanisms, IPC frameworks, and visualization tools to work seamlessly across both open source and proprietary operating systems and applications. As a leader in the open source software tools community, Mentor Graphics can tailor open source tools to meet specific industrial application requirements and is versed in the intricacies of open source and proprietary licensing.
Conclusion
As heterogeneous multicore systems become a defacto platform in the embedded industry, it is important to find partners with the hardware design, software development, and debugging expertise required to optimize and leverage this latest SoC technology.
The technology enables OEMs to add new features to their products, extend product lifecycles, shrink product form factors, and reduce power consumption. Consolidating embedded designs also enables OEMs to reduce product development time and often reuse existing software. Perhaps most importantly for industrial end users, industrial automation and IoT products with properly designed and implemented embedded SoCs can support the 20-plus year lifecycles and nonstop 24/7 operation required in many plant and factory environments
Based on what ARC learned during this briefing, it appears that Mentor Graphics is well-positioned to partner with industrial automation and IoT suppliers to help them deploy heterogeneous multicore systems within their own solutions to enhance the business value of those solutions.
Mentor, Nucleus, and Mentor Embedded Sourcery are trademarks of Mentor Graphics.
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Keywords: Mentor Graphics, Embedded, Multicore, System-on-chip, SoC, Internet of Things, IoT, Industrial Automation, Real-time Operating Systems.