A framework for generic HW/SW communication using remote method invocation

Abstract

Implementation of communication between different tasks of a concurrent embedded system is a challenging problem. The aim of our work is to support the refinement and relocation of tasks onto different execution units, such as processors running different operating system or even dedicated hardware. For this purpose communication should be transparent and as independent as possible from the underlying middleware or embedded operating system. Moreover, communication should also be transparent accros the HW/SW boundary. In this work we present a generic framework for seamless communication of (software) tasks with shared resources, called Shared Objects. Communication is implemented using a method-based interface realizing a Remote Method Invocation (RMI) protocol. Our shared communication resources can either be implemented as dedicated hardware, as shared memory or local tasks. The presented framework is a first step towards the unification of shared resource access based on embedded Linux. The effectiveness of our approach is be evaluated with different task mappings and shared resource access implementation styles.