Reducing the Number of Preemptions in Real-Time Systems Scheduling by CPU Frequency Scaling

Abhilash Thekkilakattil (1) , Anju S. Pillai (2) , Radu Dobrin (1) , Sasikumar Punnekkat (1)

1 MRTC - Mälardalen Research and Technology Centre
2 School of Engineering

Controlling the number of preemptions in real-time systems is highly desirable in order to achieve an efficient system design in multiple contexts. For example, the delays due to context switches account for high preemption overheads which detrimentally impact the system schedulability. Preemption avoidance can also be potentially used for the efficient control of critical section behaviors in multi-threaded applications. At the same time, modern processor architectures provide for the ability to selectively choose operating frequencies, primarily targeting energy efficiency as well as system performance. In this paper, we propose the use of CPU Frequency Scaling for controlling the preemptive behavior of real-time tasks. We present a framework for selectively eliminating preemptions, that does not require modifications to the task attributes or to the underlying scheduler. We evaluate the proposed approach by four different heuristics through extensive simulation studies.

Domaines: Systèmes embarqués

Abhilash Thekkilakattil, Anju S. Pillai, Radu Dobrin, Sasikumar Punnekkat. Reducing the Number of Preemptions in Real-Time Systems Scheduling by CPU Frequency Scaling. 18th International Conference on Real-Time and Network Systems, Nov 2010, Toulouse, France. pp.129-138. ⟨hal-00546923⟩