Effects of Concurrent Access to Embedded Multicore Microcontrollers with Hard Real-Time Demands

Due to increased demand on the performance of real-time control units, multicore microcontrollers are increasingly being used in this sector. The manufacturers of such microcontrollers have developed extensive model families, which have to be compatible with each other due to the same pin assignment and package form. This policy is intended to enable ECU developers to select a next larger type with more processor cores in the event of performance bottlenecks. It should be noted though that the additional processor cores increases the problem of competing access and thus also the Worst-Case Execution Time. This article identifies the impact of competing access on the performance of individual processor cores. For this purpose, three derivatives of the Infineon AURIX microcontroller family are compared and potential bottlenecks identified. Finally, recommendations are drawn up on the basis of these results in order to avoid such problems.