On the periodic behavior of real-time schedulers on identical multiprocessor platforms

This paper is proposing a general periodicity result concerning any deterministic and memoryless scheduling algorithm (including non-work-conserving algorithms), for any context, on identical multiprocessor platforms. By context we mean the hardware architecture (uniprocessor, multicore), as well as task constraints like critical sections, precedence constraints, self-suspension, etc. Since the result is based only on the releases and deadlines, it is independent from any other parameter. Note that we do not claim that the given interval is minimal, but it is an upper bound for any cycle of any feasible schedule provided by any deterministic and memoryless scheduler

Schedulability analysis for a combination of preemptive strict periodic tasks and sporadic tasks

International audienceWe consider the problem of scheduling tasks with strict periods combined with sporadic tasks. Both types of task have fixed priorities and are preemptive. For a task with a strict period, %it is necessary to prove that for any job of the task, the difference between its starting time and its release time must be identical for every job. Tasks with strict periods are typically in charge of controlling the activities of a system (sensor/actuator, feedback control, ect.). The freshness of the information they use and/or the reactivity of the system are constrained. Indeed, for control tasks, it might be important to control their jitters (the difference between the worst case and the minimum response time) to ensure the stability of the control loop. In this paper, we consider for controlled tasks, the solution satisfying property that minimizes the jitter of tasks with strict periods. For any task with strict period, (i) the start time of any job of the task must be equal to its release time and (ii) the Worst Case Response Time (WCRT) of the task must be equal to its Worst Case Execution Time (WCET). In this paper, we provide a sufficient schedulability condition for the schedulability of tasks with strict periods. We show how to define their first release times such that property \ref{property-P1} is met (based on paper \cite{rtns10}). Tasks with strict periods have the same fixed priority, the highest one. Sporadic tasks all have a lower priority than any task with a strict period. We show in this paper how to define the worst case scenario for the schedulability of sporadic tasks in the presence of tasks with strict periods. Then we propose a schedulability condition for sporadic tasks based on the worst case response time computation

Escalonar sistemas de tempo-real de alta críticalidade

Cyclic executives are used to schedule safety-critical real-time systems because of their determinism, simplicity, and efficiency. One major challenge of the cyclic executive model is to produce the cyclic scheduling timetable. This problem is related to the bin-packing problem [34] and is NP-Hard in the strong sense. Unnecessary context switches within the scheduling table can introduce significant overhead; in IMA (Integrated Modular Avionics), cache-related overheads can increase task execution times up to 33% [18]. Developed in the context of the Software Engineering Master’s Degree at ISEP, the Polytechnic Institute of Engineering in Porto Portugal, this thesis contains two contributions to the scheduling literature. The first is a precise and exact approach to computing the slack of a job set that is schedule policy independent. The method introduces several operations to update and maintain the slack at runtime, ensuring the slack of all jobs is valid and coherent. The second contribution is the definition of a state-of-the-art preemptive scheduling algorithm focused on minimizing the number of system preemptions for real-time safety-critical applications within a reasonable amount of time. Both contributions have been implemented and extensively tested in scala. Experimental results suggest our scheduling algorithm has similar non-preemptive schedulability ratio than Chain Window RM [69], yet lower ratio in high utilizations than Chain Window EDF [69] and BB-Moore [68]. For ask sets that failed to be scheduled non-preemptively, 98-99% of all jobs are scheduled without preemptions. Considering the fact that our scheduler is preemptive, being able to compete with non-preemptive schedulers is an excellent result indeed. In terms of execution time, our proposal is multiple orders of magnitude faster than the aforementioned algorithms. Both contributions of this work are planned to be presented at future conferences such as RTSS@Work and RTAS

Scheduling non-preemptive hard real-time tasks with strict periods

International audienceNon-preemptive real-time scheduling and the corresponding schedulability analyses have received considerable less attention in the research community, compared to preemptive real-time scheduling. However, non-preemptive scheduling is widely used in industry, especially in the case of hard real-time systems where missing deadlines leads to catastrophic situations and where resources must not be wasted. In many industries such as avionics tasks may have strict periods, i.e. the start times of their executions must be separated by a fixed period. Indeed, this strict periodicity is generally required by sensors and actuators which may have accurate periods. In this paper we consider separately the case where tasks have harmonic periods and the case where tasks have non-harmonic periods. Thus, the general case becomes a combination of both cases. In the harmonic case we give schedulability conditions to verify that a set of tasks is schedulable. In the non-harmonic case, in order to prove that a set of tasks is schedulable we propose local schedulability conditions that we apply iteratively to each task of the set in order to verify that this current task, added to a sub-set of tasks already scheduled, leads to a schedulable set of tasks

Event-Based Control Enters the Real-Time World: Perspectives and Pitfalls

In the last years, event-based control techniques have been gaining a steadily increasing importance owing to the advantages they bring, such as reduced network traffic, low actuator wear, reduced energy consumption of the involved devices. Applying the event-based paradigm in the context of real-time control opens up new opportunities, but introduces new challenges as well. In this paper we provide an overview of both opportunities and challenges, outlining the major problems to be tackled and as a consequence future research directions

A Survey of Research into Mixed Criticality Systems

This survey covers research into mixed criticality systems that has been published since Vestal’s seminal paper in 2007, up until the end of 2016. The survey is organised along the lines of the major research areas within this topic. These include single processor analysis (including fixed priority and EDF scheduling, shared resources and static and synchronous scheduling), multiprocessor analysis, realistic models, and systems issues. The survey also explores the relationship between research into mixed criticality systems and other topics such as hard and soft time constraints, fault tolerant scheduling, hierarchical scheduling, cyber physical systems, probabilistic real-time systems, and industrial safety standards

On-Device Deep Learning Inference for System-on-Chip (SoC) Architectures

As machine learning becomes ubiquitous, the need to deploy models on real-time, embedded systems will become increasingly critical. This is especially true for deep learning solutions, whose large models pose interesting challenges for target architectures at the “edge” that are resource-constrained. The realization of machine learning, and deep learning, is being driven by the availability of specialized hardware, such as system-on-chip solutions, which provide some alleviation of constraints. Equally important, however, are the operating systems that run on this hardware, and specifically the ability to leverage commercial real-time operating systems which, unlike general purpose operating systems such as Linux, can provide the low-latency, deterministic execution required for embedded, and potentially safety-critical, applications at the edge. Despite this, studies considering the integration of real-time operating systems, specialized hardware, and machine learning/deep learning algorithms remain limited. In particular, better mechanisms for real-time scheduling in the context of machine learning applications will prove to be critical as these technologies move to the edge. In order to address some of these challenges, we present a resource management framework designed to provide a dynamic on-device approach to the allocation and scheduling of limited resources in a real-time processing environment. These types of mechanisms are necessary to support the deterministic behavior required by the control components contained in the edge nodes. To validate the effectiveness of our approach, we applied rigorous schedulability analysis to a large set of randomly generated simulated task sets and then verified the most time critical applications, such as the control tasks which maintained low-latency deterministic behavior even during off-nominal conditions. The practicality of our scheduling framework was demonstrated by integrating it into a commercial real-time operating system (VxWorks) then running a typical deep learning image processing application to perform simple object detection. The results indicate that our proposed resource management framework can be leveraged to facilitate integration of machine learning algorithms with real-time operating systems and embedded platforms, including widely-used, industry-standard real-time operating systems

Priority based round robin (PBRR) CPU scheduling algorithm

This paper introduce a new approach for scheduling algorithms which aim to improve real time operating system CPU performance. This new approach of CPU Scheduling algorithm is based on the combination of round-robin (RR) and Priority based (PB) scheduling algorithms. This solution maintains the advantage of simple round robin scheduling algorithm, which is reducing starvation and integrates the advantage of priority scheduling. The proposed algorithm implements the concept of time quantum and assigning as well priority index to the processes. Existing round robin CPU scheduling algorithm cannot be dedicated to real time operating system due to their large waiting time, large response time, large turnaround time and less throughput. This new algorithm improves all the drawbacks of round robin CPU scheduling algorithm. In addition, this paper presents analysis comparing proposed algorithm with existing round robin scheduling algorithm focusing on average waiting time and average turnaround time