A good article by Jarrod Siket highlighting the need for a good heterogenous multicore design to be able to meet the need of embedded communications systems. I couldn't agree more. Jarrod has a number of good suggestions as to which engineering challenges need to be addressed. The article is quite timely as I just finished a webinar with Kontron on Multicore and virtualization focussing on ATCA.
Jarrod also makes the statement that 'no other processor architecture is more widely adopted or better suited than x86'. I'll certainly agree that x86 is widely adopted and that it has been doing virtualization longer than the other architectures out there due to it's IT roots.
Nonetheless, Freescale's P4080 is popular in the embedded communications market for good reason: great performance per Watt. The SoC design is focussed on telecom, more so than the generic approach taken by Intel.
It is going to be interesting over the next little while to see how these two architectures will compare in fielded systems.
Mark is a senior product manager with Wind River focusing on multicore and virtualization solutions. Prior to joining Wind River Mark has helped development teams build embedded systems across Asia, Europe and North America in automotive, telecom, consumer electronics and defense industries.
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