Abstract | Today's advanced digital signal processors (DSPs) are supported by sophisticated development environments, high level languages, and real-time operating systems (RTOSs). As a result, the role of DSPs in systems design is changing as they assume more of the functionality previously addressed by general purpose processors. For multiple DSP systems that run under an RTOS and which contain no shared memory, message passing is vital. In this report we examine the performance of message passing amongst DSPs that run under an RTOS. We describe different forms of interprocessor communications (IPC) that support message passing. We compare two commercial implementations involving different generations of DSPs manufactured by Texas Instruments, a TMS320C44-based system that uses chip-level communication ports and a TMS320C6x01-based system that uses board-level FIFO ports. We present a detailed comparison of message passing performance for these two mechanisms. |
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