Product category:
Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: Dy 4 Systems | Subject: IPC library
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 18 November 2003
Software speeds interprocessor
communications
A novel Inter-Processor Communications (IPC) software library will help designers build high-performance multiprocessor applications employing switched-interconnect technology.
A novel Inter-Processor Communications (IPC) software library will help designers build high-performance multiprocessor applications employing switched-interconnect technology The IPC library is designed to provide the functionality needed by developers of large multiprocessor DSP systems such as radar, sonar and signal intelligence
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 18 Jul 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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IPC is a key component of Dy 4 Systems' switched-interconnect strategy.
It provides customers with a software interface that will be kept consistent over future generations of processor and switched-interconnect technologies.
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IPC provides prioritised, queue-driven flow-controlled message passing for command and control as well as block transfers for high-volume time-perishable data.
A Posix-compliant interface is provided with standard open, close, read, write and ioctl functions.
An extended interface provides control over additional features.
IPC connections are based on a named endpoint convention, with dynamic determination of routing paths during runtime.
IPCs connection management is distributed.
The lack of reliance on a central database means the system software has no single point of failure, so developers can build more-reliable systems with graceful failure mechanisms.
IPC provides a single API for task-to-task communications where tasks can be resident on the same processor, same board, or on boards connected via switched-interconnect.
The software hides the underlying hardware differences, and selects the optimum transport for each connection.
The unified API greatly eases the design of building scalable software, as senders and receivers can be moved around the system without source code changes, or redesign of routing control.
The hardware abstraction provided by IPC means that software developed using IPC will port easily to future architectures and alternative switched-interconnect technology such as PCI Express AS or RapidIO.
IPC incorporates data transport features that address common scenarios in signal processing algorithms where, frequently, a single data matrix is divided between processors and reconstructed during the processing stages.
For corner turn operations, IPC supports multiple senders writing to a single receiver and strided data movements to facilitate operation on large matrices that have been partitioned.
When supported by the operating system, IPC can perform copyless message retrieval to eliminate the time wasted by making local copies of incoming messages.
IPC software is currently supported on Dy 4's Champ-AV II Quad PowerPC DSP card with StarFabric interconnect.
Dy 4 plans to include support for its single board computer products.
The software is supported for use with the VxWorks real-time operating system from Wind River.
An RTOS-free version is in development.
The IPC library is available now.
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