Hardware-based virtualization eases design with multicore
processorsToday’s SOC (system-on-chip) processors integrate a
diversity of cores, accelerators, and other processing elements.
These heterogeneous multicore architectures provide increased
computational capacity, but the resulting complexity also poses
new challenges for embedded-system developers across a variety
of applications, including control-plane processors, video
servers, wireless base stations, and broadband gateways.
Discrete cores each have full access and control of their
resources. Such predictable access allows straightforward
management and deterministic performance in applications with
real-time constraints. In a multicore architecture, however,
cores share access to resources, and potential contention
complicates many design factors, such as processing latency and
deterministically handling interrupts. To provide deterministic
behavior equivalent to that of single-core devices, multicore
architectures have begun to implement resource-