Dr. Osamah Rawashdeh

Multi-Core Processing and Automotive Applications

Multi-core microcontrollers are rapidly making their way into the automotive industry to support advanced control algorithms, the latest infotainment features, and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).  Efficient utilization of multicore microcontrollers has the potential to handle the increased complexity, reduce execution times and power consumption, as well as increase reliability. This presentation is based on a 3 year ongoing collaboration with Ford Motor Company that is focused on analyzing existing serial code and developing a runtime environment that allows the parallel execution of code on an embedded 3-core processor with load balancing and reliability in mind. The environment developed is a mixed static and dynamic scheduling runtime middle-layer with a work-stealing scheduler that runs on top of any AUTOSAR compliant multicore real-time operating system (RTOS). The goal is to aid software engineers in designing next generation automotive software as well as help migrate legacy powertrain code into multicore environments. Initial verification and validation tests used Ford powertrain software that was run on hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulators and are currently moving to testing with production software to demonstrate correctness, scalability, and improved load balancing.