Cluster formation techniques for hierarchical real time tasks allocation on multiprocessor system

Abstract

Summary Real‐time systems are nowadays extensively used in most time‐critical embedded applications. The existing multiprocessor real‐time scheduling algorithms are based on partitioned and global scheduling approaches. The partitioned‐based algorithms suffer poor utilization bound, load balancing, not compatible for an open system environment, and the global scheduling approach faces problems like high scheduling, migration overhead. Cluster scheduling represents a hybrid scheduling approach which consists of a set of processors as clusters and tasks scheduled to each processor of clusters using a global scheduling approach. The different cluster formation heuristics are investigated for homogenous clusters. The main objective of this article is to propose task utilization‐based cluster formation and harmonic period aware task allocation for a hierarchical real‐time system on a multiprocessor platform. Tasks with high utilization, cluster size tune to a smaller value to achieve high utilization. Tasks with low utilization, the size of cluster tune to larger to reduce migration and scheduling overheads. Experimentation performed on multiprocessor real‐time simulator with a different set of tasks, multiprocessor system, different tasks utilization, and cluster size. Simulation results show that cluster base approach increases the number of tasks scheduled on a multiprocessor system, system utilization, and reduces response time, migration, and preemption overheads.