Single Chip Coherent Multiprocessing

Many embedded system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs make use of multiple processors, but do so in an application-specific or "loosely coupled" manner. Until recently, SoC design options for software-friendly multiprocessing were severely limited. But with the advent of SoC design components such as the MIPS32 1004K Coherent Processing System, on-chip multiprocessing under a single operating system has become a real design option. This paper explores a number of ways that multiprocessing can be exploited to achieve high SoC performance, especially for designs with parallel operations, high rates of I/O DMA traffic, or that are being re-designed to address converging applications.