by Mark Hermeling, Senior Product Manager, Wind River Systems
Multicore processors (processors with multiple processing cores) are being considered in more embedded designs. There are in general two drivers that are bringing people to multicore: performance and/or consolidation.
The performance driver is simple. Many devices need the best performance in the smallest package with the lowest power demands. A multicore processor provides more MIPS per Watt than a single core processor. In ‘the old days’ performance could be improved by increasing the processing frequency on the processor, but for many designs this is no longer the case. The networking industry especially has been ahead of the rest of the pack in the migration to multicore.
