Stochastic analysis of real-time systems under preemptive priority-driven scheduling

Exact stochastic analysis of most real-time systems under preemptive priority-driven scheduling is unaffordable in current practice. Even assuming a periodic and independent task model, the exact calculation of the response time distribution of tasks is not possible except for simple task sets. Furthermore, in practice, tasks introduce complexities such as release jitter, blocking in shared resources, etc., which cannot be handled by the periodic independent task set model. In order to solve these problems, exact analysis must be abandoned for an approximated analysis. However, in the real-time field, approximations must not be optimistic, i.e. the deadline miss ratios predicted by the approximated analysis must be greater than or equal to the exact ones. In order to achieve this goal, the concept of pessimism needs to be mathematically defined in the stochastic context, and the pessimistic properties of the analysis carefully derived. This paper provides a mathematical framework for reasoning about stochastic pessimism, and obtaining mathematical properties of the analysis and its approximations. This framework allows us to prove the safety of several proposed approximations and extensions. We analyze and solve some practical problems in the implementation of the stochastic analysis, such as the problem of the finite precision arithmetic or the truncation of the probability functions. In addition, we extend the basic model in several ways, such as the inclusion of shared resources, release jitter or non-preemptive sections.

Search and track coordination in multi-ship multi-radar systems using schedulability envelope

This paper addresses the search and track coordination problems of multiple shipboard radars. The proposed approach first exploits the physical characteristics of a single phased array radar to improve its effective capacity. Its effective capacity is abstracted by a closed-form equation called a schedulability envelope. Using the schedulability envelope for each radar, we deal with search and track coordination as a relative-load-balancing problem in a multi-resource environment. The simulation results show that the proposed approach significantly improves the overall capacity of a multi-ship multi-radar system.

Controller Area Network (CAN) schedulability analysis: Refuted,revisited and revised

Controller Area Network (CAN) is used extensively in automotive applications, with in excess of 400 million CAN enabled microcontrollers manufactured each year. In 1994 schedulability analysis was developed for CAN, showing how worst-case response times of CAN messages could be calculated and hence guarantees provided that message response times would not exceed their deadlines. This seminal research has been cited in over 200 subsequent papers and transferred to industry in the form of commercial CAN schedulability analysis tools. These tools have been used by a large number of major automotive manufacturers in the design of in-vehicle networks for a wide range of cars, millions of which have been manufactured during the last decade. This paper shows that the original schedulability analysis given for CAN messages is flawed. It may provide guarantees for messages that will in fact miss their deadlines in the worst-case. This paper provides revised analysis resolving the problems with the original approach. Further, it highlights that the priority assignment policy, previously claimed to be optimal for CAN, is not in fact optimal and cites a method of obtaining an optimal priority ordering that is applicable to CAN. The paper discusses the possible impact on commercial CAN systems designed and developed using flawed schedulability analysis and makes recommendations for the revision of CAN schedulability analysis tools. Robert I. Davis received a DPhil in Computer Science from the University of York in 1995. Since then he has founded three start-up companies, all of which have succeeded in transferring real-time systems research into commercial product. At Northern Real-Time Technologies Ltd. (1995–1997) he was responsible for development of the Volcano CAN software library. At LiveDevices Ltd. (1997–2001) he was responsible for development of the Real-Time Architect suite of products, including an OSEK RTOS and schedulability analysis tools. In 2002, Robert returned to the University of York, and in 2004 he was involved in setting up a spin out company, Rapita Systems Ltd., aimed at transferring worst-case execution time analysis technology into industry. Robert is a member of the Real-Time Systems Research Group at the University of York, and a director of Rapita Systems Ltd. His research interests include scheduling algorithms and schedulability analysis for real-time systems. Alan Burns is head of the Real-Time Systems Research Group at the University of York. His research interests cover a number of aspects of real-time systems including the assessment of languages for use in the real-time domain, distributed operating systems, the formal specification of scheduling algorithms and implementation strategies, and the design of dependable user interfaces to real-time applications. He has authored/co-authored over 370 papers and 10 books, with a large proportion of them concentrating on real-time systems and the Ada programming language. Professor Burns has been actively involved in the creation of the Ravenscar Profile, a subset of Ada”s tasking model, designed to enable the analysis of real-time programs and their timing properties. Reinder J. Bril received a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. (both with honours) from the University of Twente, and a Ph.D. from the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He started his professional career in January 1984 at the Delft University of Technology. From May 1985 until August 2004, he was with Philips, and worked in both Philips Research as well as Philips’ Business Units. He worked on various topics, including fault tolerance, formal specifications, software architecture analysis, and dynamic resource management, and in different application domains, e.g. high-volume electronics consumer products and (low volume) professional systems. In September 2004, he made a transfer back to the academic world, to the System Architecture and Networking (SAN) group of the Mathematics and Computer Science department of the Technische Universiteit Eindhoven. His main research interests are currently in the area of reservation-based resource management for networked embedded systems with real-time constraints. Johan J. Lukkien has been head of the System Architecture and Networking Research group at Eindhoven University of Technology since 2002. He received an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. from Groningen University in the Netherlands. In 1991, he joined Eindhoven University, after two years leave at the California Institute of Technology. His research interests include the design and performance analysis of parallel and distributed systems. Until 2000 he was involved in large-scale simulations in physics and chemistry. Since 2000, his research focus has shifted to the application domain of networked resource-constrained embedded systems. Contributions of the SAN group are in the area of component-based middleware for resource-constrained devices, distributed co-ordination, Quality of Service in networked systems and schedulability analysis in real-time systems.     

Analysis of window-constrained execution time systems

Feasibility tests for hard real-time systems provide information about the schedulability of the task set. However, this information is a yes or a no answer, that is, whether the task set achieves the test or not. From the real-time system design point of view, having more information available would be useful. For example, how much the computation time can vary without jeopardising the system feasibility. This work specifically provides methods to determine off-line how much a task can increase its computation time, by maintaining the system feasibility under a dynamic priority scheduling. The extra time can be determined not only in all the task activations, but in n of a window of m invocations. This is what we call a window-constrained execution time system. The results presented in this work can be used in all kinds of real-time systems: fault tolerance management, imprecise computation, overrun handling, control applications, etc. Patricia Balbastre is an assistant professor of Computer Engineering. She graduated in Electronic Engineering at the Technical University of Valencia, Spain, in 1998. And the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at the same university in 2002. Her main research interests include real-time operating systems, dynamic scheduling algorithms and real-time control. Ismael Ripoll received the B.S. degree from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, in 1992; the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, in 1996. Currently he is Professor in the DISCA Department of the same University. His research interests include embedded and real-time operating systems. Alfons Crespo is Professor of the Department of Computer Engineering of the Technical University of Valencia. He received the PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University of Valencia, Spain, in 1984. He held the position of Associate professor in 1986 and full Professor in 1991. He leads the group of Industrial Informatics and has been the responsible of several European and Spanish research projects. His main research interest include different aspects of the real-time systems (scheduling, hardware support, scheduling and control integration, …). He has published more than 60 papers in specialised journals and conferences in the area of real-time systems.     

Verifying distributed real-time properties of embedded systems via graph transformations and model checking

Component middleware provides dependable and efficient platforms that support key functional, and quality of service (QoS) needs of distributed real-time embedded (DRE) systems. Component middleware, however, also introduces challenges for DRE system developers, such as evaluating the predictability of DRE system behavior, and choosing the right design alternatives before committing to a specific platform or platform configuration. Model-based technologies help address these issues by enabling design-time analysis, and providing the means to automate the development, deployment, configuration, and integration of component-based DRE systems. To this end, this paper applies model checking techniques to DRE design models using model transformations to verify key QoS properties of component-based DRE systems developed using Real-time CORBA. We introduce a formal semantic domain for a general class of DRE systems that enables the verification of distributed non-preemptive real-time scheduling. Our results show that model-based techniques enable design-time analysis of timed properties and can be applied to effectively predict, simulate, and verify the event-driven behavior of component-based DRE systems. This research was supported by the NSF Grants CCR-0225610 and ACI-0204028 Gabor Madl is a Ph.D. student and a graduate student researcher at the Center for Embedded Computer Systems at the University of California, Irvine. His advisor is Nikil Dutt. His research interests include the formal verification, optimization, component-based composition, and QoS management of distributed real-time embedded systems. He received his M.S. in computer science from Vanderbilt University and in computer engineering from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Dr. Sherif Abdelwahed received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2001. During 2000–2001, he was a research scientist with the system diagnosis group at the Rockwell Scientific Company. Since 2001 he has been with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Vanderbilt University as a Research Assistant Professor. His research interests include verification and control of distributed real-time systems, and model-based diagnosis of discrete-event and hybrid systems. Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt is a Professor of Computer Science, Associate Chair of the Computer Science and Engineering program, and a Senior Researcher in the Institute for Software Integrated Systems (ISIS) all at Vanderbilt University. He has published over 300 technical papers and 6 books that cover a range of research topics, including patterns, optimization techniques, and empirical analyses of software frameworks and domain-specific modeling environments that facilitate the development of distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) middleware and applications. Dr. Schmidt has served as a Deputy Office Director and a Program Manager at DARPA, where he lead the national R&D effort on middleware for DRE systems. In addition to his academic research and government service, Dr. Schmidt has over fifteen years of experience leading the development of ACE, TAO, CIAO, and CoSMIC, which are widely used, open-source DRE middleware frameworks and model-driven tools that contain a rich set of components and domain-specific languages that implement patterns and product-line architectures for high-performance DRE systems.     

多处理器单调速率任务分配算法性能评价

多处理器任务分配调度算法是一类经典实时调度算法，然而目前研究在如何根据任务集特征选择任务分配算法方面少见指导性原则，不利于提高多处理器任务分配算法的可调度率及使用尽可能少的处理器达到最优调度结果。基于两种多处理器任务调度策略的比较，本文给出划分策略下的多处理器RM调度的可调度条件和任务分配算法夏分析。仿真结果表明，各任务分配算法所需处理器数与任务集总利用率成正比。同时，分析总结出各算法适用范围及如何根据任务集利用率选择合适算法的指导原则。最后结果还表明，实际算法性能与理论性能界存在差异。     

一种实时任务可调度性预测研究

对于嵌入式系统来说,通过预测一个任务能否在绝对时限之前运行完成而决定是否调度执行是很有意义的.在ARMLinux上,为了对新任务的运行结束时间进行预测,对它的内核作了修改,按优先级排序就绪队列,每次时钟中断判断是否有优先级比当前任务更高的任务就绪,以决定是否调度,去掉了SCHED_RR调度策略,这样新任务的运行结束时间可以得到准确的计算,并根据任务的绝对时限来判断对新任务的接受和拒绝,对修改后的内核进行了试验验证.     

An Upper Bound of Task Loads in a Deadline-D All Busy Period for Multiprocessor Global EDF Real-Time Systems

This paper addresses a number of mathematical issues related to multiprocessor global EDF platforms. We present a deadline-d all busy period and backward interference which are important concepts for multiprocessor EDF systems, and some general schedulability conditions for any studied job are proposed. We formally prove that at most m-1 different tasks’ jobs could contribute their execution time to an interval starting with a P_busy−d, and we propose an approach for computing an exact upper bound of the total deadline-d task load in a given interval. Therefore, the proposed results are important foundations for constructing exact schedulability analyses of global EDF scheduling systems.     

基于时间需求迭代和排队模型的开放式实时系统可调度性分析算法研究

基于RM调度策略和可延期服务器调度的开放式实时系统,以往的可调度性分析算法造成较低资源利用率.结合时间需求分析和服务台休假M/M/1/K排队模型,考虑带宽保留服务器,提出一种高资源利用率的可调度性分析算法,对系统中所有周期任务进行可调度性分析测试.给出其在临界点的响应时间;根据非周期事件到来率和接收缓冲定量分析非周期事件的平均响应时间和事件丢失率.实验表明,提出的可调度性分析方法通过估计任务的响应时间范围,能够在较高资源利用率下,验证多任务系统的可调度性.     

TCPN的组合可调度分析

时间约束Petri网(Timing Constraints Petri nets,简称TCPNs)是一类重要的时间Petri网系统.针对TCPNs中变迁可调度原始语义的不足,本文对相关定义重新定义,丰富并完善了TPCNs理论.本文首先给出了新的针对单个变迁或变迁序列的可调度分析策略.如果一个特定的变迁序列是可调度的,则相应的活动序列也同样可以顺利地完成自身的执行;否则,不可调度的变迁需要调整自己的时间约束;然后提出了组合式的可调度分析策略以分析复杂变迁序列,最后提出时序一致性的概念.