TITLE: ARM Fast Context Switch Extension for Linux

AUTHOR: Richard Cochran, OMICRON electronics GmbH, Gilles Chanteperdrix, xenomai.org

ABSTRACT:
The ARM v5 CPUs are inexpensive, low power, 32-bit processors widely used in embedded systems. Because of these processors' cache implementation, using memory protection on these systems incurs a performance penalty too large for many real time applications. By implementing the Fast Context Switch Extension (FCSE), we achieved both memory protection and good cache performance under the Linux 2.6 kernel. We briefly discuss the problem, explain the necessary changes to the Linux memory management system, and present performance measurements taken from artificial and real world applications.

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