Investigation of implementing a synchronization protocol under multiprocessors hierarchical scheduling

In the multi-core and multiprocessor domain, there has been considerable work done on scheduling techniques assuming that real-time tasks are independent. In practice a typical real-time system usually share logical resources among tasks. However, synchronization in the multiprocessor area has not received enough attention. In this paper we investigate the possibilities of extending multiprocessor hierarchical scheduling to support an existing synchronization protocol (FMLP) in multiprocessor systems. We discuss problems regarding implementation of the synchronization protocol under the multiprocessor hierarchical scheduling

Energy-Efficient Concurrency Control for Dynamic-Priority Real-Time Tasks with Abortable Critical Sections

In this paper, we are interested in energy-efficient concurrency control for real-time tasks on a non-ideal DVS processor. Based on well-known ceiling-based concurrency control protocols (such as priority ceiling protocol (PCP) and stack resource policy (SRP)), researchers have proposed energy-efficient approaches to mange concurrent accesses to shared resources so that the energy consumption can be reduced. However, ceiling-based protocols have a problem of ceiling blocking which imposes a great impact on the performance of real-time systems. In order to achieve sufficient performance, we propose a new protocol, called conditional abortable stack resource policy (CA-SRP), to resolve the ceiling blocking problem for dynamic-priority real-time tasks by incorporating a conditional abort rule into SRP. Based on the schedulability analysis of CA-SRP, we also propose a method, called dynamic speed assignment (DSA), to dynamically calculate and assign proper processor speeds for task execution so that the energy consumption can be reduced further. The capabilities of our proposed CA-SRP and DSA have been evaluated by a series of experiments, for which we have encouraging results

Adaptive Resource Management for Uncertain Execution Platforms

Embedded systems are becoming increasingly complex. At the same time, the components that make up the system grow more uncertain in their properties. For example, current developments in CPU design focuses on optimizing for average performance rather than better worst case performance. This, combined with presence of 3rd party software components with unknown properties, makes resource management using prior knowledge less and less feasible. This thesis presents results on how to model software components so that resource allocation decisions can be made on-line. Both the single and multiple resource case is considered as well as extending the models to include resource constraints based on hardware dynam- ics. Techniques for estimating component parameters on-line are presented. Also presented is an algorithm for computing an optimal allocation based on a set of convex utility functions. The algorithm is designed to be computationally efficient and to use simple mathematical expres- sions that are suitable for fixed point arithmetics. An implementation of the algorithm and results from experiments is presented, showing that an adaptive strategy using both estimation and optimization can outperform a static approach in cases where uncertainty is high

Cache Related Pre-emption Delays in Embedded Real-Time Systems

Real-time systems are subject to stringent deadlines which make their temporal behaviour just as important as their functional behaviour. In multi-tasking real-time systems, the execution time of each task must be determined, and then combined together with information about the scheduling policy to ensure that there are enough resources to schedule all of the tasks. This is usually achieved by performing timing analysis on the individual tasks, and then schedulability analysis on the system as a whole. In systems with cache, multiple tasks can share this common resource which can lead to cache-related pre-emption delays (CRPD) being introduced. CRPD is the additional cost incurred from resuming a pre-empted task that no longer has the instructions or data it was using in cache, because the pre-empting task(s) evicted them from cache. It is therefore important to be able to account for CRPD when performing schedulability analysis. This thesis focuses on the effects of CRPD on a single processor system, further expanding our understanding of CRPD and ability to analyse and optimise for it. We present new CRPD analysis for Earliest Deadline First (EDF) scheduling that significantly outperforms existing analysis, and then perform the first comparison between Fixed Priority (FP) and EDF accounting for CRPD. In this comparison, we explore the effects of CRPD across a wide range of system and taskset parameters. We introduce a new task layout optimisation technique that maximises system schedulability via reduced CRPD. Finally, we extend CRPD analysis to hierarchical systems, allowing the effects of cache when scheduling multiple independent applications on a single processor to be analysed

Real-time scheduling in multicore : time- and space-partitioned architectures

Tese de doutoramento, Informática (Engenharia Informática), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências, 2014The evolution of computing systems to address size, weight and power consumption (SWaP) has led to the trend of integrating functions (otherwise provided by separate systems) as subsystems of a single system. To cope with the added complexity of developing and validating such a system, these functions are maintained and analyzed as components with clear boundaries and interfaces. In the case of real-time systems, the adopted component-based approach should maintain the timeliness properties of the function inside each individual component, regardless of the remaining components. One approach to this issue is time and space partitioning (TSP)—enforcing strict separation between components in the time and space domains. This allows heterogeneous components (different real-time requirements, criticality, developed by different teams and/or with different technologies) to safely coexist. The concepts of TSP have been adopted in the civil aviation, aerospace, and (to some extent) automotive industries. These industries are also embracing multiprocessor (or multicore) platforms, either with identical or nonidentical processors, but are not taking full advantage thereof because of a lack of support in terms of verification and certification. Furthermore, due to the use of the TSP in those domains, compatibility between TSP and multiprocessor is highly desired. This is not the present case, as the reference TSP-related specifications in the aforementioned industries show limited support to multiprocessor. In this dissertation, we defend that the active exploitation of multiple (possibly non-identical) processor cores can augment the processing capacity of the time- and space-partitioned (TSP) systems, while maintaining a compromise with size, weight and power consumption (SWaP), and open room for supporting self-adaptive behavior. To allow applying our results to a more general class of systems, we analyze TSP systems as a special case of hierarchical scheduling and adopt a compositional analysis methodology.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT, SFRH/BD/60193/2009, programa PESSOA, projeto SAPIENT); the European Space Agency Innovation (ESA) Triangle Initiative program through ESTEC Contract 21217/07/NL/CB, Project AIR-II; the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7) through project KARYON (IST-FP7-STREP-288195)

Scheduling algorithms and timing analysis for hard real-time systems

Real-time systems are designed for applications in which response time is critical. As timing is a major property of such systems, proving timing correctness is of utter importance. To achieve this, a two-fold approach of timing analysis is traditionally involved: (i) worst-case execution time (WCET) analysis, which computes an upper bound on the execution time of a single job of a task running in isolation; and (ii) schedulability analysis using the WCET as the input, which determines whether multiple tasks are guaranteed to meet their deadlines. Formal models used for representing recurrent real-time tasks have traditionally been characterized by a collection of independent jobs that are released periodically. However, such a modeling may result in resource under-utilization in systems whose behaviors are not entirely periodic or independent. Examples are (i) multicore platforms where tasks share a communication fabric, like bus, for accesses to a shared memory beside processors; (ii) tasks with synchronization, where no two concurrent access to one shared resource are allowed to be in their critical section at the same time; and (iii) automotive systems, where tasks are linked to rotation (e.g., of the crankshaft, gears, or wheels). There, their activation rate is proportional to the angular velocity of a specific device. This dissertation presents multiple approaches towards designing scheduling algorithms and schedulability analysis for a variety of real-time systems with different characteristics. Specifically, we look at those design problems from the perspective of speedup factor — a metric that quantifies both the pessimism of the analysis and the non-optimality of the scheduling algorithm. The proposed solutions are shown promising by means of not only speedup factor but also extensive evaluations

Scheduling techniques to improve the worst-case execution time of real-time parallel applications on heterogeneous platforms

The key to providing high performance and energy-efficient execution for hard real-time applications is the time predictable and efficient usage of heterogeneous multiprocessors. However, schedulability analysis of parallel applications executed on unrelated heterogeneous multiprocessors is challenging and has not been investigated adequately by earlier works. The unrelated model is suitable to represent many of the multiprocessor platforms available today because a task (i.e., sequential code) may exhibit a different work-case-execution-time (WCET) on each type of processor on an unrelated heterogeneous multiprocessors platform. A parallel application can be realistically modeled as a directed acyclic graph (DAG), where the nodes are sequential tasks and the edges are dependencies among the tasks. This thesis considers a sporadic DAG model which is used broadly to analyze and verify the real-time requirements of parallel applications. A global work-conserving scheduler can efficiently utilize an unrelated platform by executing the tasks of a DAG on different processor types. However, it is challenging to compute an upper bound on the worst-case schedule length of the DAG, called makespan, which is used to verify whether the deadline of a DAG is met or not. There are two main challenges. First, because of the heterogeneity of the processors, the WCET for each task of the DAG depends on which processor the task is executing on during actual runtime. Second, timing anomalies are the main obstacle to compute the makespan even for the simpler case when all the processors are of the same type, i.e., homogeneous multiprocessors. To that end, this thesis addresses the following problem: How we can schedule multiple sporadic DAGs on unrelated multiprocessors such that all the DAGs meet their deadlines. Initially, the thesis focuses on homogeneous multiprocessors that is a special case of unrelated multiprocessors to understand and tackle the main challenge of timing anomalies. A novel timing-anomaly-free scheduler is proposed which can be used to compute the makespan of a DAG just by simulating the execution of the tasks based on this proposed scheduler. A set of representative task-based parallel OpenMP applications from the BOTS benchmark suite are modeled as DAGs to investigate the timing behavior of real-world applications. A simulation framework is developed to evaluate the proposed method. Furthermore, the thesis targets unrelated multiprocessors and proposes a global scheduler to execute the tasks of a single DAG to an unrelated multiprocessors platform. Based on the proposed scheduler, methods to compute the makespan of a single DAG are introduced. A set of representative parallel applications from the BOTS benchmark suite are modeled as DAGs that execute on unrelated multiprocessors. Furthermore, synthetic DAGs are generated to examine additional structures of parallel applications and various platform capabilities. A simulation framework that simulates the execution of the tasks of a DAG on an unrelated multiprocessor platform is introduced to assess the effectiveness of the proposed makespan computations. Finally, based on the makespan computation of a single DAG this thesis presents the design and schedulability analysis of global and federated scheduling of sporadic DAGs that execute on unrelated multiprocessors

Une méthode globale pour la vérification d’exigences temps réel : application à l’avionique modulaire intégrée

Dans le domaine de l’aéronautique, les systèmes embarqués ont fait leur apparition durant les années 60, lorsque les équipements analogiques ont commencé à être remplacés par leurs équivalents numériques. Dès lors, l’engouement suscité par les progrès de l’informatique fut tel que de plus en plus de fonctionnalités ont été numérisées. L’accroissement permanent de la complexité des systèmes a conduit à la définition d’une architecture appelée Avionique Modulaire Intégrée (IMA pour Integrated Modular Avionics). Cette architecture se distingue des architectures antérieures, car elle est fondée sur des standards (ARINC 653 et ARINC 664 partie 7) permettant le partage des ressources de calcul et de communication entre les différentes fonctions avioniques. Ce type d’architecture est appliqué aussi bien dans le domaine civil avec le Boeing B777 et l’Airbus A380, que dans le domaine militaire avec le Rafale ou encore l’A400M. Pour des raisons de sûreté, le comportement temporel d’un système s’appuyant sur une architecture IMA doit être prévisible. Ce besoin se traduit par un ensemble d’exigences temps réel que doit satisfaire le système. Le problème exploré dans cette thèse concerne la vérification d’exigences temps réel dans les systèmes IMA. Ces exigences s’articulent autour de chaînes fonctionnelles, qui sont des séquences de fonctions. Une exigence spécifie alors une borne acceptable (minimale ou maximale) pour une propriété temporelle d’une ou plusieurs chaînes fonctionnelles. Nous avons identifié trois catégories d’exigences temps réel, que nous considérons pertinentes vis-à-vis des systèmes étudiés. Il s’agit des exigences de latence, de fraîcheur et de cohérence. Nous proposons une modélisation des systèmes IMA, et des exigences qu’ils doivent satisfaire, dans le formalisme du tagged signal model. Nous montrons alors comment, à partir de ce modèle, nous pouvons générer pour chaque exigence un programme linéaire mixte, c’est-à-dire contenant à la fois des variables entières et réelles, dont la solution optimale permet de vérifier la satisfaction de l’exigence. ABSTRACT : Embedded systems appeared in aeronautics during the 60’s, when the process of replacing analog devices by their digital counterpart started. From that time, the broad thrust of computer science advances make it possible to digitize more and more avionics functionalities. The continual increase of the complexity of these systems led to the definition of a new architecture called Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA). This architecture stands apart from previous architecture because it is based on standards (ARINC 653 and ARINC 664 part 7) which allow the sharing of computation and communication resources among avionics functions. This architecture is implemented in civil aircrafts, with Boeing B777 and Airbus A380, and in military aircrafts, with Rafale or A400M. For safety reason, the temporal behaviour of such a system must be predictable, which is expressed with a set real-time requirements. A real-time requirement specifies an upper or lower bound of a temporal property of one or several functional chains. A functional chain is a sequence of functions. In this thesis, we explore the verification of real-time requirements in IMA systems. We have identified three real-time requirements relevant to our problem : latency, freshness and consistency. We propose a model of IMA systems, and the requirements they must meet, based on the tagged signal model. Then we derive from this model, for each requirement, a mixed integer linear program whose optimal solution allows us to verify the requirement