This session is best described by the headline to the first presentation:

“The Embedded World has gone multicore crazy – what do software developers need to know to prevent them going crazy too?”

Problems and possibilities with Multicore operating systems and efficient, correct and testable programs.

Presentations will be made by:

David Stewart CriticalBlue 

“The Embedded World has gone multicore crazy – what do software developers need to know to prevent them going crazy too?”

This presentation will provide insight into how software developers should manage the transition towards multicore architectures, in particular as it relates to existing software applications. Two different but related perspectives will be given. The presenter is the co-chair of the Multicore Programming Practices (MPP) working group within the Multicore Association. The MPP working group is pulling together a set of best practices based on the combined experiences of all the member companies and will publish a freely available guide for software developer based on current languages and current architectures. The presentation will describe the motivation for the MPP working group, its current status and plans for completion. The presenter is also the CEO of an embedded tools company that launched a new tool earlier this year to assist with multicore migration of existing sequential software. This tool was 3 years in the making and involved many discussions with software developers around the world. The presentation will explain the 6 most important requests that came from software developers, some of which are quite surprising.

David Stewart is CEO and co-founder of CriticalBlue, a company that develops and distributes solutions for migrating existing sequential software onto multithreaded and multicore platforms. He also co-chair the Multicore Programming Practices working group with Max Domeika of Intel, under the auspices of the Multicore Association. David worked 10 years at Cadence where he was a founder and business development director of the SoC Design Centre on the Alba Campus in Scotland. David also worked at LSI Logic, NEC and National Semiconductor, as well as several US-based startup companies. He holds a First Class Honours Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Strathclyde.

Magnus Karlsson ENEA

"How to combine bare metal performance and SMP ease-of-
use with a multicore RTOS".


Using real-time operating systems (RTOS) on multicore chips has
become a major focus of the embedded industry. Many approaches have been suggested; among the most common are using an SMP OS or running on "bare metal" without any OS. Each approach has its pros and cons. SMP promotes great ease-of-use but requires applications to be rewritten to take advantage of parallelism and faces scalability and performance issues as
the number of cores increases. Without any OS, users get the best
performance, but the lack of proper OS support limits applicability to small and simple applications.

In this presentation, we introduce a new paradigm in multicore OS
technology which combines the performance and scalability of bare metal with the ease-of-use of SMP. As a case study, we present how OSE Multicore Edition can be used in packet-handling applications such as carrier-grade networking and telecom systems.


Magnus Karlsson is currently a System Architect at Enea. His
interests include real-time and general operating system design,
facilitating the management and debugging of large systems,
multiprocessor computer architectures and virtual machines. Magnus has
authored more than 30 papers in the fields of computer science and
engineering and is the holder of a number of U.S. patents. He holds a
Ph.D. (1999) from Chalmers University in Computer Engineering.

Anders Musikka Prevas

“Multi-Core Processors from a Software Perspective – Problems and Possibilities”

Today, all the CPUs on the Intel and AMD roadmaps for server, desktop and laptop computers are multi-core CPUs. Even on ultra portables and netbooks, multi-core CPUs are expected to be the standard very soon. With low-power dual-core CPUs now being available, embedded applications are increasing. This session will give an overview of possibilities with multi-core technology, then focus mainly on the problem of writing efficient, correct and testable programs for multi-core CPUs.

Anders Musikka is a senior software developer and consultant with extensive experience in designing multithreaded software solutions. Having done work for Ericsson, Swedish Defence Materiel Administration (FMV), and the Swedish Air Force, he has implemented solutions for Symmetric MultiThread (SMT) realtime 3D visualization, dual core audio/video processing, and realtime quad-core cache-optimized IP-telecommunications. He holds a masters degree in information technology, specialized in embedded systems, from KTH in Stockholm. He is presently employed by Prevas AB.