Masaki Gondo
eSOL

ARM11 MPCore and Cortex-A9 MPCore are excellent multicore processors, appropriate for both SMP and AMP. These advanced processors open up design opportunities for innovative system solutions. It is, however, likely that such system to be more complex, and yet more integrated. System partitioning, is one of common technique to manage a complex system, and this often translates to core (or set of cores) partitioning in symmetric multicore processor system. An example is a system comprised of software with different reliability levels, partitioning them into different processor cores. Paravirtualization has been one of few choices to implement such, and the industry is yet to explore other possibilities much up to now. This article starts with the overview of system partitioning, then explains paravirtualization including its potential issues. The second half introduces eT-Kernel Multi-Core Edition Memory Partitioning, which allows system partitioning with a single OS, and how the technology can be used to overcome paravirtualization issues to successfully design a complex but integrated embedded devices.