Software thread integration for embedded system display applications

Embedded systems require control of many concurrent real-time activities, leading to system designs that feature a variety of hardware peripherals, with each providing a specific, dedicated service. These peripherals increase system size, cost, weight, and design time. Software thread integration (STI) provides low-cost thread concurrency on general-purpose processors by automatically interleaving multiple threads of control into one. This simplifies hardware to software migration (which eliminates dedicated hardware) and can help embedded system designers meet design constraints, such as size, weight and cost. We have developed concepts for performing STI and have implemented many in our automated postpass compiler Thrint. Here we present the transformations and examine how well the compiler integrates threads for two display applications. We examine the integration procedure, the processor load, and code memory expansion. Integration allows reclamation of CPU idle time, allowing run-time speedups of 1.6x to 3.6x.

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