A Multi-Core Benchmark Framework for Linux-Based Embedded Systems Using Synthetic Task-Set Generation

Accurately evaluating multi-core embedded systems remains a major challenge, as existing benchmarking methods and tools fail to reproduce realistic workloads with inter-core contentions. This study introduces a benchmark framework for Linux-based embedded systems that integrates a synthetic task-set generation model capable of reproducing both computational and contention characteristics observed in real-world applications. Applying this benchmark to three Linux kernel variants on a 16-core embedded platform, we have identified distinct scalability patterns and contention sensitivities among kernel configurations. The results mainly demonstrate the framework’s capability to reveal performance characteristics under Linux, but the proposed methodology itself has high portability and extendability by design to support various multi-core platforms including the RTOS-based ones.