Title: Fixed-priority global scheduling for mixed-criticality real-time systems

Authors: Owen R. Kelly; Hakan Aydin

Addresses: Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, USA ' Department of Computer Science, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, USA

Abstract: There has been a growing interest in recent years in mixed-criticality real-time systems in which tasks are attributed different levels of criticality based on the degree to which their deadlines must be assured. While most of the initial efforts on mixed-criticality systems targeted single-processor systems, the research community has recently started to investigate multiprocessor mixed-criticality real-time systems. In this paper we investigate how global, fixed-priority algorithms can be applied in the context of multiprocessor mixed-criticality systems. We identify the two key dimensions of the problem - priority assignment and schedulability testing, and consider candidate algorithms for each dimension. We also propose a new and simple priority assignment policy called CPRatio that considers both task criticality and timing constraints to improve the schedulability of mixed-criticality task sets. We experimentally evaluate the performance of priority assignment strategies and schedulability tests in the global multiprocessor mixed-criticality scheduling context.

Keywords: mixed-criticality; real-time scheduling; global scheduling; fixed-priority scheduling; multiprocessor scheduling; schedulability tests; task criticality; timing constraints.

DOI: 10.1504/IJES.2014.063825

International Journal of Embedded Systems, 2014 Vol.6 No.2/3, pp.266 - 276

Received: 14 Sep 2013
Accepted: 11 Oct 2013

Published online: 31 Jul 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article