Keywords

Embedded, Parallel System, Semaphore, Encryption

Abstract

The advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and other innovative technologies promote a demand for high-performance processing systems, underscoring the importance of parallel computing. As a result, the application of parallel systems has spread across various domains. Most of the existing parallel systems are implemented on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), which require complex designs and adjustments from the user and are often costly despite some performance benefits. This work explores an alternative approach by implementing a parallel system with a distributed memory protocol on affordable and commercially available microcontroller platforms to provide a scalable and cost-effective system. The proposed parallel system architecture contains a memory unit and a set of two or three processing nodes to increase hardware scalability. The design establishes an interconnected array of these modules to facilitate parallel computation. The implementation uses semaphores to enable process synchronization, identification, memory access control through a locking mechanism, and ID assignment. Encryption is used to demonstrate software scalability and the communication protocol of SPI connectivity. Each processing node executes computational tasks using encryption algorithms to convert input messages into encrypted text using the node’s localization and identification as keys. This setup showed increased efficiency compared to conventional single-core processors. However, the current software scalability architecture remains limited due to project time constraints, suggesting potential expansion in future research. Additionally, the proposed architecture can be expanded into three-dimensional arrangements, offering a promising approach to minimizing spatial requirements, substantially increasing scalability, and improving throughput by reducing data transmission distance.

Completion Date

2025

Semester

Summer

Committee Chair

Weeks, Arthur

Degree

Master of Science in Computer Engineering (M.S.Cp.E.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Format

PDF

Identifier

DP0029602

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Campus Location

Orlando (Main) Campus

Download

Share

COinS