Analysis of Coprocessor-based Acceleration for Hardware-based Semaphore Concurrency Control

Authors

Abstract

Coprocessors are widely integrated into modern
microprocessors, particularly in safety-critical systems. They
handle interrupts and accelerate computationally intensive
operations, such as cryptographic and floating-point calculations;
furthermore, they enable separation between system components.
This article adopts a structured approach to provide a formal
description of coprocessors and their role within modern
microprocessor architectures. In addition, a concurrency control
system based on Inter-Processor Interrupts (IPIs) is presented
and compared with a polling-based synchronization approach
using hardware-based semaphores. Finally, this study evaluates
whether coprocessors can be utilized to accelerate multi-core
synchronization by executing computations in parallel with
synchronization.

Additional Files

Published

2026-07-17

Issue

Section

Security, Safety, Military