Simultaneous multithreading support in embedded distributed memory MPSoCs

Scalability and programmability are important issues in large homogeneous MPSoCs. Such architectures often rely on explicit message-passing among processors, each of which possessing a local private memory. This paper presents a low-overhead hardware/software distributed shared memory approach that makes such architectures multithreading-capable. The proposed solution is implemented into an open-source message-passing MPSoC through developing a POSIX-like thread API, which shows excellent scalability using application kernels used for benchmarking in shared-memory systems. This approach efficiently draws strengths from the on-chip distributed private memory that opens the way to exposing the multithreading programmability/capabilities of that component as a general-purpose accelerator.