A Lazy Bailout Approach for Dual-Criticality Systems on Uniprocessor Platforms

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.A challenge in the design of cyber-physical systems is to integrate the scheduling of tasks of different criticality, while still providing service guarantees for the higher critical tasks in case of resource-shortages caused by faults. While standard real-time scheduling is agnostic to the criticality of tasks, the scheduling of tasks with different criticalities is called mixed-criticality scheduling. In this paper we present the Lazy Bailout Protocol (LBP), a mixed-criticality scheduling method where low-criticality jobs overrunning their time budget cannot threaten the timeliness of high-criticality jobs while at the same time the method tries to complete as many low-criticality jobs as possible. The key principle of LBP is instead of immediately abandoning low-criticality jobs when a high-criticality job overruns its optimistic WCET estimate, to put them in a low-priority queue for later execution. To compare mixed-criticality scheduling methods we introduce a formal quality criterion for mixed-criticality scheduling, which, above all else, compares schedulability of high-criticality jobs and only afterwards the schedulability of low-criticality jobs. Based on this criterion we prove that LBP behaves better than the original {\em Bailout Protocol} (BP). We show that LBP can be further improved by slack time exploitation and by gain time collection at runtime, resulting in LBPSG. We also show that these improvements of LBP perform better than the analogous improvements based on BP.Peer reviewedFinal Published versio

Mixed-Criticality Scheduling with I/O

This paper addresses the problem of scheduling tasks with different criticality levels in the presence of I/O requests. In mixed-criticality scheduling, higher criticality tasks are given precedence over those of lower criticality when it is impossible to guarantee the schedulability of all tasks. While mixed-criticality scheduling has gained attention in recent years, most approaches typically assume a periodic task model. This assumption does not always hold in practice, especially for real-time and embedded systems that perform I/O. For example, many tasks block on I/O requests until devices signal their completion via interrupts; both the arrival of interrupts and the waking of blocked tasks can be aperiodic. In our prior work, we developed a scheduling technique in the Quest real-time operating system, which integrates the time-budgeted management of I/O operations with Sporadic Server scheduling of tasks. This paper extends our previous scheduling approach with support for mixed-criticality tasks and I/O requests on the same processing core. Results show the effective schedulability of different task sets in the presence of I/O requests is superior in our approach compared to traditional methods that manage I/O using techniques such as Sporadic Servers.Comment: Second version has replaced simulation experiments with real machine experiments, third version fixed minor error in Equation 5 (missing a plus sign

Scheduling policies and system software architectures for mixed-criticality computing

Mixed-criticality model of computation is being increasingly adopted in timing-sensitive systems. The model not only ensures that the most critical tasks in a system never fails, but also aims for better systems resource utilization in normal condition. In this report, we describe the widely used mixed-criticality task model and fixed-priority scheduling algorithms for the model in uniprocessors. Because of the necessity by the mixed-criticality task model and scheduling policies, isolation, both temporal and spatial, among tasks is one of the main requirements from the system design point of view. Different virtualization techniques have been used to design system software architecture with the goal of isolation. We discuss such a few system software architectures which are being and can be used for mixed-criticality model of computation

Mapping AADL models to a repository of multiple schedulability analysis techniques

To fill the gap between the modeling of real-time systems and the scheduling analysis, we propose a framework that supports seamlessly the two aspects: 1) modeling a system using a methodology, in our case study, the Architecture Analysis and Design Language (AADL), and 2) helping to easily check temporal requirements (schedulability analysis, worst-case response time, sensitivity analysis, etc.). We introduce an intermediate framework called MoSaRT, which supports a rich semantic concerning temporal analysis. We show with a case study how the input model is transformed into a MoSaRT model, and how our framework is able to generate the proper models as inputs to several classic temporal analysis tools

Flexible Scheduling in Multimedia Kernels: an Overview

Current Hard Real-Time (HRT) kernels have their timely behaviour guaranteed on the cost of a rather restrictive use of the available resources. This makes current HRT scheduling techniques inadequate for use in a multimedia environment where we can make a considerable profit by a better and more flexible use of the resources. We will show that we can improve the flexibility and efficiency of multimedia kernels. Therefore we introduce Real Time Transactions (RTT) with Deadline Inheritance policies for a small class of scheduling algorithms and we will evaluate these algorithms for use in a multimedia environmen

MORA: an Energy-Aware Slack Reclamation Scheme for Scheduling Sporadic Real-Time Tasks upon Multiprocessor Platforms

In this paper, we address the global and preemptive energy-aware scheduling problem of sporadic constrained-deadline tasks on DVFS-identical multiprocessor platforms. We propose an online slack reclamation scheme which profits from the discrepancy between the worst- and actual-case execution time of the tasks by slowing down the speed of the processors in order to save energy. Our algorithm called MORA takes into account the application-specific consumption profile of the tasks. We demonstrate that MORA does not jeopardize the system schedulability and we show by performing simulations that it can save up to 32% of energy (in average) compared to execution without using any energy-aware algorithm.Comment: 11 page

Securing Real-Time Internet-of-Things

Modern embedded and cyber-physical systems are ubiquitous. A large number of critical cyber-physical systems have real-time requirements (e.g., avionics, automobiles, power grids, manufacturing systems, industrial control systems, etc.). Recent developments and new functionality requires real-time embedded devices to be connected to the Internet. This gives rise to the real-time Internet-of-things (RT-IoT) that promises a better user experience through stronger connectivity and efficient use of next-generation embedded devices. However RT- IoT are also increasingly becoming targets for cyber-attacks which is exacerbated by this increased connectivity. This paper gives an introduction to RT-IoT systems, an outlook of current approaches and possible research challenges towards secure RT- IoT frameworks