Investigation of the speed-up of a dual microcontroller parallel processing system in the execution of a mathematical operation

Peter Harrington, Wai Pang Ng

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Abstract

An investigation of the performance of a two microcontroller parallel processing system is presented. A twomicrocontroller parallel processing is developed using low end microcontrollers (PIC 16F877). An 8x8 bit multiply operation and a 16x16 bit multiply operation are executed on a single microcontroller and on the proposed dual microcontroller parallel processing system in order to assess the performance of the proposed system. Results presented show poor performance for the 8x8 bit multiply with an average speed up factor of 0.82 This is due to the time required to transfer data around the dual microcontroller system being significant in comparison to the time required to complete the multiply operation, thus nullifying the potential advantage that might be expected of a dual microcontroller system. The 16x16 multiplier exhibited good performance, with results showing a maximum average speed up factor of 1.7 and an average speed up factor of 1.5. The 16x16 multiplication requires longer time to compute and the data transfer time between microcontrollers whilst still having an impact on the overall computation time is significantly less than for the 8x8 multiplier A formula has been developed to provide an estimate of the possible speed up within a system in relation to the process execution time and the time required to communicate data around the proposed system. The proposed system was developed and tested using the Proteus simulation software.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 2012
EventPGNet 2012: The 13th Annual Postgraduate Symposium on The Convergence of Telecommunications, Networking and Broadcasting - Liverpool, UK
Duration: 1 Jan 2012 → …

Conference

ConferencePGNet 2012: The 13th Annual Postgraduate Symposium on The Convergence of Telecommunications, Networking and Broadcasting
Period1/01/12 → …

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