Real-time disk scheduling in a mixed-media file system

This paper presents our real-time disk scheduler called the Delta L scheduler, which optimizes unscheduled best-effort disk requests by giving priority to best-effort disk requests while meeting real-time request deadlines. Our scheduler tries to execute real-time disk requests as much as possible in the background. Only when real-time request deadlines are endangered, our scheduler gives priority to real-time disk requests. The Delta L disk scheduler is part of our mixed-media file system called Clockwise. An essential part of our work is extensive and detailed raw disk performance measurements. The Delta L disk scheduler for its real-time schedulability analysis and to decide whether scheduling a best-effort request before a real-time request violates real-time constraints uses these raw performance measurements. Further, a Clockwise off-line simulator uses the raw performance measurements where a number of different disk schedulers are compared. We compare the Delta L scheduler with a prioritizing Latest Start Time (LST) scheduler and non-prioritizing EDF scheduler. The Delta L scheduler is comparable to LST in achieving low latencies for best-effort requests under light to moderate real-time loads and better in achieving low latencies for best-effort requests for extreme real-time loads. The simulator is calibrated to an actual Clockwise. Clockwise runs on a 200MHz Pentium-Pro based PC with PCI bus, multiple SCSI controllers and disks on Linux 2.2.x and the Nemesis kernel. Clockwise performance is dictated by the hardware: all available bandwidth can be committed to real-time streams, provided hardware overloads do not occur

A project to investigate mechanisms and methodologies for the design and construction of communicating concurrent processes in real-time environments

Research undertaken in 1979 into effective and appropriate mechanisms to aid in the design and construction of software for use in the flight research programs undertaken by NASA is presented

Real-time characteristics of switched ethernet for "1553B" -embedded applications : simulation and analysis

In our previous work , Full Duplex Switched Ethernet was put forward as an attractive candidate to replace the MIL-STD 1553B data bus, in next generation "1553B"-embedded applications. An analytic study was conducted, using the Network Calculus formalism, to evaluate the deterministic guarantees offered by our proposal. Obtained results showed the effectiveness of traffic shaping techniques, combined with priority handling mechanisms on Full Duplex Switched Ethernet in order to satisfy 1553B-like real-time constraints. In this paper, we extend this work by the use of simulation. This gives the possibility to capture additional characteristics of the proposed architecture with respect to the analytical study, which was basically used to evaluate worst cases and deterministic guarantees. Hence, to assess the real-time characteristics of our proposed interconnection technology, the results yielded by simulation are discussed and average latencies distributions are considered

CSP channels for CAN-bus connected embedded control systems

Closed loop control system typically contains multitude of sensors and actuators operated simultaneously. So they are parallel and distributed in its essence. But when mapping this parallelism to software, lot of obstacles concerning multithreading communication and synchronization issues arise. To overcome this problem, the CT kernel/library based on CSP algebra has been developed. This project (TES.5410) is about developing communication extension to the CT library to make it applicable in distributed systems. Since the library is tailored for control systems, properties and requirements of control systems are taken into special consideration. Applicability of existing middleware solutions is examined. A comparison of applicable fieldbus protocols is done in order to determine most suitable ones and CAN fieldbus is chosen to be first fieldbus used. Brief overview of CSP and existing CSP based libraries is given. Middleware architecture is proposed along with few novel ideas

Performance analysis of a Master/Slave switched Ethernet for military embedded applications

Current military communication network is a generation old and is no longer effective in meeting the emerging requirements imposed by the next generation military embedded applications. A new communication network based upon Full Duplex Switched Ethernet is proposed in this paper to overcome these limitations. To allow existing military subsystems to be easily supported by a Switched Ethernet network, our proposal consists in keeping their current centralized communication scheme by using an optimized master/slave transmission control on Switched Ethernet thanks to the Flexible Time Triggered (FTT) paradigm. Our main objective is to assess the performance of such a proposal and estimate the quality of service we can expect in terms of latency. Using the Network Calculus formalism, schedulability analysis are determined. These analysis are illustrated in the case of a realistic military embedded application extracted from a real military aircraft network, to highlight the proposal's ability to support the required time constrained communications

A distributed scheduling method for computer integrated manufacturing : the use of local area networks in cellular systems

Includes bibliographical references (p. 24-26)

Real-time and fault tolerance in distributed control software

Closed loop control systems typically contain multitude of spatially distributed sensors and actuators operated simultaneously. So those systems are parallel and distributed in their essence. But mapping this parallelism onto the given distributed hardware architecture, brings in some additional requirements: safe multithreading, optimal process allocation, real-time scheduling of bus and network resources. Nowadays, fault tolerance methods and fast even online reconfiguration are becoming increasingly important. All those often conflicting requirements, make design and implementation of real-time distributed control systems an extremely difficult task, that requires substantial knowledge in several areas of control and computer science. Although many design methods have been proposed so far, none of them had succeeded to cover all important aspects of the problem at hand. [1] Continuous increase of production in embedded market, makes a simple and natural design methodology for real-time systems needed more then ever

Exploring Alternatives to use Master/Slave Full Duplex Switched Ethernet for Avionics Embedded Applications

The complexity of distributed real-time systems, including military embedded applications, is increasing due to an increasing number of nodes, their functionality and higher amounts of exchanged data. This higher complexity imposes major development challenges when nonfunctional properties must be enforced. On the other hand, the current military communication networks are a generation old and are no longer effective in facing such increasingly complex requirements. A new communication network, based on Full Duplex Switched Ethernet and Master/slave approach, has been proposed previously. However, this initial approach is not efficient in terms of network bandwidth utilization. In this paper we propose two new alternative approaches that can use the network bandwidth more efficiently. In addition we provide a preliminary qualitative assessment of the three approaches concerning different factors such as performance, scalability, complexity and flexibility