It’s becoming obvious to many embedded system designers that multiprocessing is the next big trend in performance and power optimization. And whether it’s a system based on symmetric multiprocessing or heterogeneous multiprocessing, it’s also obvious that standards need to be put in place to make it easier for designers and to shorten time-to-market. In a new consortium, led by Markus Levy, API standards will be one of the focus areas for multiprocessing chips and systems. When talking about standards, it’s recognized that there’s a need for industry-recognized multiprocessing benchmarks. Currently, EEMBC’s multiprocessing benchmark working group, led by John Goodacre of ARM, is focused on developing benchmarks aimed at multicore consumer applications.

Reprinted in its entirety from ARM IQ Vol. 4, No. 2, 2005