Consolidating and Optimizing Embedded Processor IP Blocks for Area, Power, and Sustainability

The growth of computing continues to place power demands on an ever-stressed energy grid. Embedded systems are a part of that demand. Focusing on the architecture of the System-On-Chip (SoC) is an area of interest for power optimization. Intellectual Property (IP) blocks that provide support functionality for SoC designs are often licensed from vendors who provide little or no visibility into their inner workings, requiring reliance on vendor-supplied metrics. This work proposes TurbOS, a small footprint open-source operating system (OS) for reducing required resources within IP blocks. TurbOS utilizes the Turbo9 microprocessor, and is just 20% the size of the popular FreeRTOS operating system, while providing the same functionality. For certain applications, the number of IP blocks can be reduced without loss of functionality.