• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.177-187
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• 2020

Virtualization with hypervisors is one of emerging topics in multicore processors for space. Hypervisors are software layers to make several independent virtualized environments on one processor. Since all hardware resources are virtualized and distributed only by hypervisors, overall performance of processors can be improved by fully utilizing the resources. However at the same time, there are overheads for virtualizing and distributing hardware resources. Satellites are one of hard real time systems, and performance degradation with overheads should be analyzed thoroughly. Previous research on the overheads focused on single core systems. Even the overheads were analyzed in multicore systems, SMP environment was not fully included. This paper builds SMP environment with XtratuM, one of hypervisors for space missions, and analyzes performance degradation with overheads. Two boards of GR712RC with 2 LEON3FT CPUs and GR740 with 4 LEON4 CPUs are used in experiments. On each board, SMP benchmark functions are executed on SMP environment with XtratuM and on that without XtratuM respectively. Results are analyzed to find timing characteristics including overheads. Finally, applicability of the XtratuM to flight software in SMP is also reviewed.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.51-61
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• 2019

There are strict evaluation processes before using new processors to satellites. Engineers evaluate processors from various viewpoints including specification, development environment, and cost. From a viewpoint of computation power, manufacturers provide benchmark results with processors, and engineers decide which processors are adequate to their satellites by comparing the benchmark results with requirements of their satellites. However, the benchmark results depends on a test environment of manufacturers, and it is quite difficult to achieve similar performance in a target environment. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the processors in the target environment. This paper compares performance of a processor, AT697F/LEON2, in software testbed (STB) with three development boards of XC2V/LEON3, GR712RC/LEON3, and GR740/LEON4. Seven benchmark functions of Dhrystone, Stanford, Coremark, Whetstone, Flops, NBench, and MiBench are selected. Results are analyzed with hardware and software properties: hardware properties of core architecture, number of cores, cache, and memory; and software properties of build options and compilers. Based on the analysis, this paper describes a guideline for choosing processors for next generation satellites.