NEC成功研製多元處理器動態控制技術

NEC Succeeds in Development of Multiprocessor Dynamic-Control Technology

October 03, 2007 - NEC Corporation has succeeded in the development of multiprocessor dynamic-control technology, which enables embedded devices, such as mobile phones, digital home electronics and automotive information devices, to coordinate with each other through open networks, such as the Internet. The newly developed technology simultaneously achieves dynamic allocation of the processing performance, required for device coordination, and protection of pre-installed, basic-function software.

NEC’s cutting edge multiprocessor dynamic-control technology, which can dynamically allocate some of a multiprocessor’s processors to device coordination, is a platform technology that will achieve highly-scalable performance for device coordination and high security for embedded systems in the future.

Once this technology is realized, users are expected to benefit from new services based on device coordination, such as an anti-crime service that is linked with a child’s mobile phone and a town’s monitoring cameras, an auto-payment service that coordinates with customers’ information terminals and restaurants’ point-of-sales devices, and a driver-assist service that coordinates with drive recorders and car navigation systems.

Based on NEC’s proprietary multiprocessor technology for embedded systems, the new multiprocessor dynamic-control technology includes the following features:
1. The number of processors for device coordination can be changed freely in response to the required performance without fixed allocation of all processors to pre-installed software. This enables some processors to be dynamically switched for either coordination of other embedded devices or the execution of pre-installed software.
2. Pre-installed software can be protected from device driver bugs or attacks of malicious software during device coordination operation on open networks as a hardware monitor blocks the malicious access issued to memory or I/Os for device coordination.
3. Due to the hardware monitor, the performance overhead of pre-installed software is reduced to almost nothing as compared with software-based conventional systems.

In recent years, embedded devices, such as mobile phones, digital home electronics and automotive information devices, have had to enable increasingly flexible coordination with other embedded devices through open networks in order to provide more convenient services for users. This has lead to a greater need for embedded devices to satisfy highly scalable performance and high security requirements for device coordination. NEC’s new multiprocessor dynamic-control technology allows processors contained in an embedded device to be freely allocated to both pre-installed software and device coordination, enabling secure information devices that allow flexible coordination with embedded devices.

NEC has been promoting intensive research on multiprocessor technologies that help provide high performance and low-power dissipation to embedded systems, and expects its new multiprocessor dynamic-control technology will contribute to the enhanced coordination of embedded devices in a ubiquitous networked society.

This research result was presented by NEC on October 1, 2007 at the international conference on hardware/software co-design and system synthesis, CODES+ISSS, which was held in Salzburg, Austria from September 30 to October 3, 2007. NEC received the Best Paper Award at CODES+ISSS for the research result.