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Contemporary distributed embedded systems in many domains have become highly complex due to ever-increasing demand on advanced computer controlled functionality. The resource reservation techniques can be effective in lowering the software complexity, ensuring predictability and allowing flexibility during the development and execution of these systems. This paper proposes a novel end-to-end resource reservation model for distributed embedded systems. In order to support the development of predictable systems using the proposed model, the paper provides a method to design resource reservations and an end-to-end timing analysis. The reservation design can be subjected to different optimization criteria with respect to runtime footprint, overhead or performance. The paper also presents and evaluates a case study to show the usability of the proposed model, reservation design method and end-to-end timing analysis. 

The task scheduling problem for Multiprocessor System-on-Chips (MPSoC), which plays a vital role in performance, is an NP-hard problem. Exploring the whole search space in order to find the optimal solution is not time efficient, thus metaheuristics are mostly used to find a near-optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time. We propose a novel metaheuristic method for near-optimal scheduling that can provide performance guarantees for multiple applications implemented on a shared platform. Applications are represented as directed acyclic task graphs (DAG) and are executed on an MPSoC platform with given communication costs. We introduce a novel multi-population method inspired by both genetic and imperialist competitive algorithms. It is specialized for the scheduling problem with the goal to improve the convergence policy and selection pressure. The potential of the approach is demonstrated by experiments using a Sobel filter, a SUSAN filter, RASTA-PLP and JPEG encoder as real-world case studies.

Component-based software development facilitates the development process of large and complex software systems. By the advent of multiprocessors, the independently developed components can be integrated on a multi-core platform to achieve an efficient use of system hardware and a decrease in system power consumption and costs. In this paper, we consider a virtual multiprocessor platform where each component can be dynamically allocated to any set of processors of the platform with a maximum concurrency level. Global-EDF is used for intra-component scheduling. The existing analysis for such systems have assumed that tasks are independent. In this paper, we enable intra-component resource sharing for this platform. We investigate using a spin-based resource sharing protocol with the accompanying analysis that extends the existing analysis for independent tasks. We briefly illustrate and evaluate our initial results with an example.

Component-based software systems with real-time requirements are often scheduled using processor reservation techniques. Such techniques have mainly evolved around hard real-time systems in which worst-case resource demands are considered for the reservations. In soft real-time systems, reserv- ing the processors based on the worst-case demands results in unnecessary over-allocations. In this paper, targeting soft real-time systems running on multiprocessor platforms, we focus on components for which processor demand varies during run-time. We propose a feedback scheduling frameworkwhere processor reservations are used for scheduling components. The reservation bandwidths as well as the reservation periods are adapted using MIMO LQR controllers. We provide an allocation mechanism for distributing components over processors. The proposed framework is implemented in the TrueTime simulation tool for system identification. We use a case study to investigate the performance of our framework in the simulation tool. Finally, the framework is implemented in the Linux kernel for practical evaluations. The evaluation results suggest that the framework can efficiently adapt the reservation parameters during run-time by imposing negligible overhead.

Modern computer systems are often designed to play a multipurpose role. Therefore, they are capable of running a number of software components (software programs) simultaneously in parallel. These software components should share the system resources (e.g. processor and network) such that all of them run and finish their computations as expected. On the other hand, a number of software components have timing requirements meaning that they should not only access the resources, but this access should also be in a timely manner. Thus, there is a need to timely share the resources among different software components. The time-sharing is often realized by reserving a time-portion of resources for each component. Such a reservation should be adequate and resource-efficient. It should be sufficient to preserve the timing properties of the components. Also, the reservations should be resource-efficient to reduce the components' footprint on the resources which in turn allows integration of more software components on a given hardware resource. In this thesis, we mainly focus on the resource-efficiency of the reservations. We consider two cases. (I) Components which can tolerate occasional timing violations (soft real-time components): in this case we adjust the reservations during run-time to match the reservation sizes based on the instantaneous requirements of the components. (II) Components which cannot tolerate any timing violations (hard real-time components): in this case we use flexible approaches which allow us to improve the resource-efficiency at the design time.

Moderna datasystem är ofta utformade för att spela en mångsidig roll. De är därför kapabla till att köra flera mjukvarukomponenter (programvaror) samtidigt. Dessa mjukvarukomponenter delar systemresurser (t.ex. processorn och nätverket) under körning. Målet med mjukvarukomponentens körning är att avsluta sina beräkningar som förväntat. Vissa mjukvarukomponenter har även tidskrav vilket innebär att de inte bara kräver tillgång till systemresurser för att köra sina beräkningar, utan de har även krav på när denna tillgång sker för att mjukvarukomponenterna ska för rätt funktion kunna garantera att beräkningar utförs i rätt tid. Således finns det ett behov av att snabbt dela resurser mellan olika mjukvarukomponenter. Den tids-delning realiseras ofta genom att reservera en tidslucka för komponenten då denna är tänkt att och får använda resursen. Reservationen måste vara tillräcklig för att mjukvarukomponenten ska kunna köra som förväntat. Reservationen måste även tilldelas resurseffektivt dvs resurstid får inte slösas bort i onödan. Genom en resurseffektiv reservation av resurserminskar komponentens fotavtryck på resursen som i sin tur möjliggör integration av flera programvarukomponenter på samma resurs. Denna avhandling fokuserar främst på resurseffektivitet i samband med reservationerna. Två fall behandlas. (I) Komponenter som tål att missa vissa enstaka tidskrav (så kallade mjuka realtidskomponenter): i det här fallet anpassas reservationerna under körning enligt komponenternas ständigt föränderliga önskemål på reservationsstorlek. (II) Komponenter som inte kan hantera att tidskrav överträds (så kallade hårda realtidskomponenter): i det här fallet används flexibla strategier som möjliggör  förbättrad resurseffektiviteten redan vid design av systemet.

Complexity in the real-time embedded softwaredomain has been growing rapidly. The component-based softwaredevelopment approach facilitates the development process of suchsoftware systems by dividing a complex system into a numberof simpler components. Resource reservation techniques havebeen widely used for providing resources to real-time softwarecomponents. In this paper we target real-time components operatingon a distributed resource infrastructure. Furthermore,we target a class of software components which demonstratedynamic resource consumption behavior. A prime example ofsuch components is a multimedia software component. In thepaper, we present a framework supporting multi-resource endto-end resource reservations. We reserve resource bandwidths onboth processor resources as well as on the network resources. Theproposed framework utilizes a Multiple Input Multiple Output(MIMO) controller which adjusts the sizes of reservations trackingthe dynamic resource demands of the software components. Finally, we present a case study using a multimedia component todemonstrate the performance and efficiency of our framework.

Fixed Priority Scheduling (FPS) is the de facto standard in industry and it is the scheduling algorithm used in OSEK/AUTOSAR. Applications in such systems are compositions of so called runnables, the functional entities of the system. Runnables are mapped to operating system tasks during system synthesis. In order to improve system performance it is proposed to execute runnables non-preemptively while varying the tasks threshold between runnables. This allows simpler resource access, can reduce the stack usage of the system, and improve the schedulability of the task sets. FPDS , as a special case of fixed-priority scheduling with deferred preemptions, executes subjobs non-preemptively and preemption points have preemption thresholds, providing exactly the proposed behavior. However OSEK/AUTOSAR-conform systems cannot execute such schedules. In this paper we present an approach allowing the execution of FPDS schedules. In our approach we exploit pseudo resources in order to implement FPDS . It is further shown that our optimal algorithm produces a minimum number of resource accesses. In addition, a simulation based evaluation is presented in which the number of resource accesses as well as the number of required pseudo-resources by the proposed algorithms are investigated. Finally, we report the overhead of resource access primitives using our measurements performed on an AUTOSARcompliant operating system.

Component-based software development providesa modular approach to develop complex software systems. In the context of real-time systems, it is desirable to abstract the timing properties of software components using an interface foreach component. The timing properties of the whole system, composed of multiple components, is studied using the component interfaces. In this paper we focus on periodic interface models. In the case of components developed for single processor platforms, for examining the system schedulability, the interfaces can be regarded as periodic tasks. Thus, making it possible to use the conventional schedulability analyses for the system level schedulability test. In the case of components developed formultiprocessors, since interfaces may have utilization larger than 100 % of a single processor, it is not possible to directly use the component interfaces for the system schedulability test. There-fore, the interfaces have to be decomposed before performing thesystem level schedulability test. In this paper, we target the special case of partitioned EDF for scheduling the components integrated on a multiprocessor. Therefore, the system level schedulability test is equivalent to finding a feasible allocation of component interfaces on the multiprocessor. We propose two algorithms for allocating the multiprocessor periodic interfaces. In addition, we propose anorthogonal approach for developing component-based real-timesystems on multiprocessors in which components with utilizationmore than 100 % of a single processor are divided into smaller subcomponents before abstracting their interfaces. We show, through extensive evaluations, that our alternative approach significantly reduces the interface overhead.