Improving a Hardware-based Real-time Kernel : Improving Embedded Systems Performance

Sammanfattning: Embedded systems rely on faster microprocessors and system optimizations to improve their performance. These enhancements are becoming marginal, and so it is interesting to look at other alternatives. This thesis examines the use of a hardware-based kernel called Sierra as an accelerator for software-based real-time operating systems. The software RTOS focused upon is FreeRTOS, and it is compared to Sierra in regards to performance to see if there is actually any improvement to be gained. This proves true, as Sierra is several times faster than FreeRTOS in regards to most of the functionality measured. In order to find out how difficult it would be to perform such acceleration a comparison of the systems is also included, encompassing their architecture, features and functionality. It is showed that the systems are similar in these properties, meaning acceleration would be possible. This information was used in an analysis that shows how to perform the acceleration. The work of implementing system acceleration is not in the scope of this thesis, but the result is presented as a suggestion, or manual, for future work in this vein.