The OReK real-time micro kernel for FPGA-based systems-on-chip

This paper presents the features, architecture, application design flow and evaluation of the OReK real-time micro kernel, for integration on FPGA-based SoCs for applications running on embedded softcore or hardwired processors. The features of the OReK kernel include the combined support for heterogeneous task sets, predictable shared resources synchronization, task-based interrupt servicing and runtime policing of the timing constraints, making it appropriate to manage multimedia application tasks with different types of timing properties and requirements. OReK is compact, highly configurable and supported on three distinct FPGA embedded processor architectures with different levels of performance and implementation technologies.