Phantom: a serializing compiler for multitasking embedded software

In an era of powerful general-purpose embedded compute platforms, the migration of system functionality from application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to software has become a promising trend toward addressing the system complexity and shrinking time-to-market window challenges. Hence, in modern embedded systems, software development plays an increasingly vital role. On the other hand, the real-time concurrent programming model provides the high level abstractions necessary to effectively design complex software. Support for real-time concurrent programming is typically provided by a realtime operating system. We propose an alternate solution, the Phantom serializing compiler, to support the real-time concurrent programming model. The Phantom serializing compiler generates a single-threaded monolithic executable, from the multi-threaded application software, capable of directly executing on the underlying embedded compute platform. Further, the generated executable is tuned for maximum performance and efficiency, yielding an application-specific solution. In this paper, we give an overview of the Phantom serializing compiler and demonstrate its feasibility with some experimental results