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Towards a User-Mode Approach to Partitioned Scheduling in the seL4 Microkernel
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering. (IS)ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6157-5199
Mälardalen University, School of Innovation, Design and Engineering. (IS)ORCID iD: 0000-0001-6132-7945
2012 (English)Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

This paper presents a preliminary study of applying partitioned scheduling in the seL4 microkernel. This microkernel is the first operating system kernel ever to be formally proven for its functional correctness. Even though the kernel is completely verified it still delivers high performance comparable to other L4 kernels. The seL4 kernel implements isolation of components in terms of the memory resource and security. However, there is still a missing part when it comes to isolation and that is time partitioning. Time partitioning can be implemented inside the kernel (privileged mode) or in user space (user mode). The latter is done using regular user-space thread(s) and can easily be modified while the other approach requires re-verification of the kernel whenever modifications to the time-partitioning policy is done. On the other hand, having the time-partitioning mechanism in privileged mode would yield better performance. We have implemented time partitioning (partitioned scheduling) in the seL4 user space and we elaborate on its performance in terms of overhead costs.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2012.
National Category
Engineering and Technology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-17384OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-17384DiVA, id: diva2:579715
Conference
5th Workshop on Compositional Theory and Technology for Real-Time Embedded Systems (CRTS 2012), San Juan, Puerto Rico, December 4,2012
Available from: 2012-12-20 Created: 2012-12-20 Last updated: 2014-01-07Bibliographically approved
In thesis
1. Synthesis and Synchronization Support for Hierarchically Scheduled Real-Time Systems
Open this publication in new window or tab >>Synthesis and Synchronization Support for Hierarchically Scheduled Real-Time Systems
2014 (English)Doctoral thesis, comprehensive summary (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

A piece of software, that we define as a software system, can consist of anything from a few lines of program code or the entire software stack in a vehicle. Software systems can be divided into smaller and partially independent parts called subsystems/partitions (we use the words partition and subsystem interchangeably). The non-functional isolation of subsystems, that appears when the software system is hierarchically divided, has great advantages when it comes to preventing fault propagation between subsystems. The hierarchical division, that we refer to as hierarchical scheduling, has other advantages as well. It facilitates re-usability and it makes timing analysis of software systems easier. Hierarchical scheduling has been shown to be a useful tool in counteracting the verification challenges that comes from the growing complexity in software. For example, the avionics-specification ARINC653 and the safety-critical operating systems seL4 and PikeOS safely divide resources for independent safety-critical applications by using hierarchical scheduling.

Hierarchical scheduling can be implemented in many different ways, depending on what resource that is supposed to be shared among applications. The resource could be the CPU, memory, network etc. The work in this thesis is focused on the practical aspects of timing isolation among subsystems, i.e., sharing of the CPU resource. Hence, this work elaborates on how to adapt and extend the operating-system task-scheduler to support hierarchical scheduling. We have focused on both independent and semi-dependent subsystems. Independent subsystems only share general resources such as the CPU and memory. Semi-independent subsystems share not only the general resources, but also other logical resources that can only be accessed in a mutually exclusive way, i.e., by one subsystem at a time. An example of such a resource could be a shared memory-space, e.g., a database, a memory-mapped device etc.

This thesis has two main parts related to hierarchical scheduling: scheduler synthesis, and synchronization.

Scheduler synthesis is related to implementation and design strategies when adding support for hierarchical scheduling in an operating system. We have focused on various operating systems that were lacking the feature of hierarchical scheduling. The two most interesting operating systems that we worked on was Linux and seL4. These two operating systems represent two extremes, where Linux is more focused towards soft real-time systems and seL4 towards pure hard real-time (safety-critical) systems. Linux-based systems have in general less strict demands on correctness and more requirements on usability. Usability implies less installation efforts and less limitations in the usage of the available Linux functionality. The usability aspect is especially important for Linux systems since kernel updates occur much more frequently compared to any other operating system. Hence, extending/modifying the functionality of Linux must be done in a way that does not require any modifications to the kernel. seL4 on the other hand has strict requirements on safety, i.e., functional and non-functional correctness, but also performance efficiency. Guaranteeing correctness implies a potential loss of performance due to the added overhead that the verified software can bring. The correctness aspect includes strategies on how to verify hierarchical schedulers, but also how to minimize the scheduler overhead and achieve as good run-time performance as possible. Conclusively, there are many challenges when it comes to scheduler synthesis. There are requirements on performance, usability, correctness etc. The contribution in the synthesis part includes a scheduler framework called ExSched (External Scheduler). We have also contributed with a novel approach to verify hierarchical schedulers, and a code generator called TAtoC (Timed Automata to C) which contributes to the effective run-time performance of synthesized timed-automata models.

The second part of this thesis, synchronization, is an important general aspect of hierarchically scheduled systems since the isolation of subsystems makes resource sharing among subsystems more challenging. We have advanced the state-of-the-art in this research area by introducing a new synchronization protocol called RRP (Rollback Resource Policy) that improves on the robustness and run-time performance compared to the existing protocols. We have also conducted a large scale experimental evaluation of all existing protocols that we have implemented in the widely used real-time operating system VxWorks.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Västerås: Mälardalen University, 2014. p. 266
Series
Mälardalen University Press Dissertations, ISSN 1651-4238 ; 149
National Category
Computer Engineering
Research subject
Computer Science
Identifiers
urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-23462 (URN)978-91-7485-131-1 (ISBN)
Public defence
2014-01-31, Gamma, Västerås, 10:00 (English)
Opponent
Supervisors
Available from: 2014-01-07 Created: 2013-12-12 Last updated: 2018-01-11Bibliographically approved

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Åsberg, MikaelNolte, Thomas

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