Processor Affinity or Bound Multiprocessing: Easing the Migration to Embedded Multicore Processing

June 2010
9 pages

Processor Affinity or Bound Multiprocessing: Easing the Migration to Embedded Multicore Processing

Migrating systems designed for single core processors to multicore environments is still a challenge. Bound multiprocessing (BMP) can help with these migrations. It improves SMP processor affinity. It allows developers to bind all threads (including dynamically created threads) in a process or even a subsystem to a specific processor without code changes.

Contents

Introduction — Asymmetric Multiprocessing — Symmetric Multiprocessing — Processor Affinity — Limits of Processor Affinity — Bound Multiprocessing — Runmask Inheritance — Inheritance Masks — Conclusion [+]

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Author
Shiv Nagarajan
shiv@qnx.com

Shiv Nagarajan

Shiv Nagarajan has been a senior computer scientist at QNX for more than a decade. He was instrumental in developing bound multi-processing, as well as numerous other QNX innovations for realtime operating systems.

During his career, Shiv has authored and co-authored numerous articles, including "A randomised parallel approach to synthesis based constraint satisfaction" (1997), "Non binary constraint satisfaction: from the dual to the primal" (2001), "Extending dual arc consistency" (2002). He also co-authored QDOOCS, A C++ class library for solving binary constraint satisfaction problems (1996).

Shiv Nagarajan holds a B.Eng. from the University of Bangalore, and an M.Sc. and Ph.D., both in Computer Science, from the University of Regina.