Even as semiconductor companies tend toward multiprocessing solutions in many network, embedded consumer and mobile designs, the RTOSes and development tools are still rushing to catch up with the shift.
Most multiprocessing-capable operating systems support one type of processor at a time and are often limited to symmetric multiprocessing (SMP). While SMP provides a relatively straightforward path from single processing, it can only be used for homogeneous configurations with shared resources.
But most embedded applications are at least partially asymmetric in nature. And asymmetric multiprocessor (AMP) systems require multiple instantiations of the same or different operating systems running on different cores.