Feasible Automatic Reconfigurations of Real-Time OS Tasks

Author(s):  
Hamza Gharsellaoui ◽  
Atef Gharbi ◽  
Mohamed Khalgui ◽  
Samir Ben Ahmed

This research deals with reconfigurable uniprocessor embedded real-time systems to be implemented by different OS tasks that should be independent, synchronous, and periodic, and that should meet functional and temporal properties described in user requirements. The authors define two forms of automatic reconfigurations assumed to be applied at run-time: addition-removal of tasks or just modifications of their temporal parameters; WCET and/or periods. The authors define a new semantic of reconfigurations where a crucial criterion to consider is the automatic improvement of the system’s feasibility at run-time.

2013 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hamza Gharsellaoui ◽  
Mohamed Khalgui ◽  
Samir Ben Ahmed

Real-time scheduling is the theoretical basis of real-time systems engineering. Earliest Deadline first (EDF) is an optimal scheduling algorithm for uniprocessor real-time systems. The paper deals with Reconfigurable Uniprocessor embedded Real-Time Systems classically implemented by different OS tasks that the authors suppose independent, synchronous and periodic to meet functional and temporal properties described in user requirements. They define two forms of automatic reconfigurations which are applied at run-time: Addition-Remove of tasks or just modifications of their temporal parameters: WCET and/or Periods. The authors define a new semantic of the reconfiguration where a crucial criterion to consider is the automatic improvement of the system’s feasibility at run-time by using an Intelligent Agent that automatically checks the system’s feasibility after any reconfiguration scenario to verify if all tasks meet the required deadlines. To handle all possible reconfiguration solutions, the authors propose an agent-based architecture that applies automatic reconfigurations to re-obtain the system’s feasibility and satisfy user requirements. Therefore, they developed the tool RT-Reconfiguration to support these contributions that they apply on the running example system and the authors apply the Real-Time Simulator, Cheddar to check the whole system behavior and evaluate the performance of the algorithm. They present simulations of this architecture where the agent that implemented is evaluated.


2013 ◽  
pp. 236-274
Author(s):  
Hamza Gharsellaoui ◽  
Atef Gharbi ◽  
Olfa Mosbahi ◽  
Mohamed Khalgui ◽  
Antonio Valentini

This chapter deals with Reconfigurable Uniprocessor embedded Real-Time Systems to be classically implemented by different OS tasks that we suppose independent, asynchronous, and periodic in order to meet functional and temporal properties described in user requirements. The authors define a schedulability algorithm for preemptable, asynchronous, and periodic reconfigurable task systems with arbitrary relative deadlines, scheduled on a uniprocessor by an optimal scheduling algorithm based on the EDF principles and on the dynamic reconfiguration. Two forms of automatic reconfigurations are assumed to be applied at run-time: Addition-Remove of tasks and just modifications of their temporal parameters: WCET and/or Periods. Nevertheless, when such a scenario is applied to save the system at the occurrence of hardware-software faults, or to improve its performance, some real-time properties can be violated. The authors define a new semantic of the reconfiguration where a crucial criterion to consider is the automatic improvement of the system’s feasibility at run-time by using an Intelligent Agent that automatically checks the system’s feasibility after any reconfiguration scenario to verify if all tasks meet the required deadlines. Indeed, if a reconfiguration scenario is applied at run-time, then the Intelligent Agent dynamically provides otherwise precious technical solutions for users to remove some tasks according to predefined heuristic (based on soft or hard task), or by modifying the Worst Case Execution Times (WCETs), periods, and/or deadlines of tasks that violate corresponding constraints by new ones, in order to meet deadlines and to minimize their response time. To handle all possible reconfiguration solutions, they propose an agent-based architecture that applies automatic reconfigurations in order to re-obtain the system’s feasibility and to satisfy user requirements. Therefore, the authors developed the tool RT-Reconfiguration to support these contributions that they apply to a Blackberry Bold 9700 and to a Volvo system as running example systems and we apply the Real-Time Simulator Cheddar to check the whole system behavior and to evaluate the performance of the algorithm (detailed descriptions are available at the Website: http://beru.univ-brest.fr/~singhoff/cheddar). The authors present simulations of this architecture where they evaluate the agent that they implemented. In addition, the authors present and discuss the results of experiments that compare the accuracy and the performance of their algorithm with others.


Author(s):  
Jia Xu

In most embedded, real-time applications, processes need to satisfy various important constraints and dependencies, such as release times, offsets, precedence relations, and exclusion relations. Embedded, real-time systems with high assurance requirements often must execute many different types of processes with such constraints and dependencies. Some of the processes may be periodic and some of them may be asynchronous. Some of the processes may have hard deadlines and some of them may have soft deadlines. For some of the processes, especially the hard real-time processes, complete knowledge about their characteristics can and must be acquired before run-time. For other processes, prior knowledge of their worst case computation time and their data requirements may not be available. It is important for many embedded real-time systems to be able to simultaneously satisfy as many important constraints and dependencies as possible for as many different types of processes as possible. In this paper, we discuss what types of important constraints and dependencies can be satisfied among what types of processes. We also present a method which guarantees that, for every process, no matter whether it is periodic or asynchronous, and no matter whether it has a hard deadline or a soft deadline, as long as the characteristics of that process are known before run-time, then that process will be guaranteed to be completed before predetermined time limits, while simultaneously satisfying many important constraints and dependencies with other processes.


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