BareMichael: A Minimalistic Bare-metal Framework for the Intel SCC

The many-core Intel SCC processor is one of a class of emerging, highly parallel computer architectures. Intel provides a modern Linux kernel which, running on the SCC as a separate instance per core, is able to load and launch user applications. However, there is a lack of open-source tools to facilitate development of “bare-metal” SCC applications – applications that are run directly on the chip without the support, overhead, or restrictiveness of an underlying operating system. To help fill this void, we present BareMichael, a minimalistic framework for compiling, loading, and launching mixed C and assembly code on the bare-metal Intel SCC. The framework also includes MikeTerm, a one-way pseudo-terminal for displaying output from an application as it executes on the chip. We share our solution in the hope that it will lower the barrier for others to begin development in a bare-metal environment on the SCC. Furthermore, we demonstrate the utility of BareMichael through two applications: supporting the use of the RCCE messagepassing library, and serving as the foundation for a port of the Embedded Xinu operating system.