Cache-aware real-time scheduling simulator

Abstract

Evaluating cache related preemption delay (CRPD) in preemptive scheduling context of Real-Time Embedded System (RTES) stays an open issue despite of its practical importance. Indeed, various parameters should be taken into account such as memory layout, cache utilization, processor utilization, priority assignment and scheduling algorithm. In state-of-the-art work, dependencies amongst those parameters are not investigated with precision because of the lack of scheduling analysis tool taking them into account. In this article, we present a tool to investigate and evaluate scheduling analysis of RTES with cache memory and various scheduling parameters. The work consists in modeling guidelines and implementation of a cache-aware scheduling simulator. Implementation is made in Cheddar, an open-source scheduling analyzer, which is freely available to researchers and practitioners. Experiments are conducted in order to illustrate applicability and performance of our tool. Furthermore, we discuss about implementation issues, problems raised and lessons learned from those experiments.

Feasibility interval and sustainable scheduling simulation with CRPD on uniprocessor platform

“…In some cases, the authors used simulation in their experiments; however, the method to perform the simulation has not been formalized. Our previous work in [16] presents a CRPD-aware scheduling simulator that is compliant with existing analytical methods in [21], [2], [34] and [28]; however, the problems regarding sustainability, feasibility interval and pessimism are not addressed. In this article, we aim to address these issues by presenting a formal and detailed description of CRPD-aware scheduling simulation.…”

“…In Cheddar, we implemented the model of tasks following C on-lim computation model. A detailed explanation of how Cheddar is extended to systems with cache can be found at [16].…”

“…Indeed, the development of open-source scheduling simulators is not keeping pace with analytical-based approaches. The most recent efforts to account for cache memory are SimSo [15] and Cheddar [16] which do not address the problems regarding sustainability, feasibility interval and pessimism.…”