Real Time Operating Systems

Course originally developed by Maj Ron Smith

Scheduling & Schedulers

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Real Time Operating Systems

Specifying Timing Constraints Modeling Timing Constraints and Resources

24-Apr-14
Dr. Alain Beaulieu Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Subtitled

Outline
Scheduling & Resource Management Approaches to Scheduling (RTS)
Clock-Driven Scheduling Round-Robin Scheduling Priority Scheduling Static versus Dynamic Systems & Scheduling

Periodic task Model

RTOS Schedulers
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Scheduling and Resource Management Scheduling algorithms - Policy

the rules under which jobs are assigned to processors are defined by the system scheduling algorithm

Resource management (access-control)

The scheduler - Mechanism

the allocation and coordination of the system (passive) resources to jobs is defined by the resource access-control protocols the module which implements these algorithms and protocols
Dr. Alain Beaulieu Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

24-Apr-14

Scheduling and Resource Management Schedules

a schedule is the assignment by the scheduler of all jobs in the system to the available processors we assume that the scheduler is correct in that ->

It only produces valid schedules

1. 2. 3. 4. at any time one processor is assigned at most one job at any time each job is assigned at most one processor* no job is scheduled before its release time the total amount of processor time allocated is equal to each jobs maximum execution time (or actual)** 5. all precedence and resource constraints are met
* implies no parallel processing at job level
24-Apr-14

** depends on algorithm
Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling and Resource Management Feasible schedules

a feasible schedule is one in which all jobs meet their timing constraints (usually deadlines) to say that a set of jobs is schedulable by an algorithm implies that scheduling under this algorithm always produces a feasible schedule

Optimal algorithms
finding feasible schedules is not always easy an algorithm which always produces a feasible schedule, if one exists, is said to be optimal
What does this say about a set of jobs which cannot be scheduled by an optimal algorithm?
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Scheduling and Resource Management Hierarchical scheduling

rarely is there ever just one scheduler in a RTS, and frequently these multiple schedulers exist within some type of hierarchical structure may have schedulers of logical / physical devices which exist separate from the application scheduler may have jobs scheduled by the application scheduler which are themselves schedulers
monitors, database servers, disk drives ...

Example - a queued aperiodic poller

24-Apr-14

message handlers

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Approaches to Scheduling
There are generally three broad classes, or approaches to processor scheduling:
Clock-driven scheduling Round-robin scheduling Priority scheduling

One can also classify scheduling schemes according to:

Off-line versus On-line scheduling Static versus Dynamic scheduling
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Clock-Driven Scheduling
At pre-specified time instants, a job or sequence of jobs are scheduled onto the processor(s)
job/task scheduling is designed off-line all system job parameters are known a priori and are fixed scheduling overhead is minimal may be implemented using a hardware timer mechanism illustrate by way of example on the board
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Timer-Driven Scheduling
Observe the schedule below for this system: {T1= (4,1) , T2= (5,1.5), T3 = (20,1) , T4 = (20,2)}
slack time (space for asynchronous jobs)

hyperperiod, H = 20

T1 T2 T3 T1 T2 0 2 4 6

T1 T4 8 10

T1 T2 12 14

T1 T2 16 18

T1 20

...
22 24

How do we choose this design? How do we implement this design?

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Timer-Driven Scheduling
Rather than making scheduling decisions at arbitrary times, limit decision making to specific points in the hyperperiod, at frame boundaries
scheduling decision points frame size, f = 4 T1 T2 T3 T1 T2 0 2 4 6 T1 T4 8 10 T1 T2 12 14 T1 T2 16 18 20 22

hyperperiod, H = 20

...
24

major cycle minor cycle on T1

24-Apr-14

No preemption within frames

Dr. Alain Beaulieu Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Round-Robin Scheduling
In straight round robin scheduling,
ready jobs are inserted in a FIFO queue and when they reach the front of the queue they are given an equal slice of processor time jobs are preempted at the end of their slice regardless of completion status therefore in an n job system, each job gets 1/n th of the processor typically processor time slices are quite short with respect to execution times
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Weighted Round-Robin Scheduling

In weighted round robin scheduling,
each job gets wt slices of the processor time depending upon the weight of the job therefore in an n job system, job Ji gets wti/(wt) of the processing time
Job J1 J2 J3 J4 Wt 2 5 2 1 e 3 7 4 3 % CPU ___ ___ ___ ___

Example:

What would 1 round of time slice scheduling look like?

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Priority-Driven Scheduling
In a priority-driven system, ready jobs are assigned to processors according to their relative priorities
also called greedy scheduling or list scheduling priorities may be static or dynamic jobs may be preemptable or nonpreemptable
in general preemptive scheduling feels intuitively better than nonpreemptive but there are exceptions

Most commonly supported approach in RTOS

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Dynamic versus Static Systems

A dynamic system has a common job priority queue such that when a processor becomes available the next ready job is executed; a static system configures jobs statically on a predefined processor Intuition says that a dynamic system will have better performance than a static one

Within a dynamic system jobs may be able to migrate or not

jobs which can not migrate start on the first available processor, and must finish there
Dr. Alain Beaulieu

again there are exceptions

24-Apr-14

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Dynamic versus Static Priority Scheduling

A dynamic priority scheduling algorithm allows for task / job priorities to change at run-time With static priority scheduling the tasks / jobs have a fixed (generally) a priori priority assignment
do not confuse this with dynamic & static systems

We will only study fixed (static) priority scheduling algorithms

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Validating the Timing Constraints of a System

Step 1 specification correctness
Check for consistency/correctness of constraints

Step 2 task feasibility

Validate that each task can meet its constraints if it were to execute standalone on the processor

Step 3 system validation*

Validate that all tasks together under the given scheduling & resource management strategy meet their respective constraints * The difficult part!
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

The Periodic Task Model The periodic task model is a classical workload model of real-time systems; one which we will study further in this course
the underlying assumption is that each regular or semi-regular function of the system be modeled as a periodic task each periodic task (Ti) is defined by its period (pi) and its worst-case execution time (ei) a tasks period is defined as the minimum length of all time intervals between release times of consecutive jobs
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

The Periodic Task Model The accuracy of the model is dictated by how closely it resembles the system under study
it is quite accurate when the release time jitter is small (best when all tasks are truly periodic) and when the execution times of tasks are well known and have small deviations conversely the accuracy of the model degrades if the release time jitters are high and/or the execution times have high variance
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

The Periodic Task Model

k jobs in a task Ti -> Ji,1 , Ji,2 , Ji,k
infinite)
given J1,1 of (2,7]; (k is usually

release time ri,1 of Ji,1 defines the phase of Ti

the hyperperiod (H) of a set of periodic tasks is defined by their least common multiple the amount of time a task keeps the processor busy is known as utilization
ui = ei / pi given tasks with periods of 3, 8 & 12 H = 24 and the maximum # of jobs N = 8 +3 +2 = 13

the phase of T1, 1 = 2

{read this as r1,1=2, d1,1=7}

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

The Periodic Task Model Often we assume that within each task a job releases at the beginning of the period and that it need only complete by the end of the period More generally, Di can be any value
-> default deadline is equal to the period (Di = pi )
we can model job precedence in terms of release times and deadlines example: r1,1= 0, d1,1= 3, r1,2= 3, d1,2= 7 -> J1,1 < J1,2 How can we use deadline to minimize response jitter?
24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Release vs Response Time Jitter

Lets examine the difference between release time jitter and response time jitter of a realtime system modeled under the periodic task model.

See Labrosse handout

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Execution Jitter case 1

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Execution Jitter - case 2

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Execution Jitter - case 3

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

The Periodic Task Model

Aperiodic and sporadic tasks model events which arrive (release) unpredictably
the inter-arrival times of these tasks are identically distributed random variables the execution times of these tasks are also i.d. random variables

Aperiodic tasks have jobs with soft or no deadlines

example: Automobile Collision Avoidance System update situational awareness display

Sporadic tasks have jobs with hard deadlines

example: ACAS disengage auto-steering

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

Question
What about system overhead times such as context switching?

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7

References
[1] Liu, J.W.S., Real-Time Systems, PrenticeHall, 2000. [2] Labrosse, J.J., MicroC/OS-II 1st and 2nd Editions (1999, 2002)

24-Apr-14

Dr. Alain Beaulieu

Scheduling & Schedulers- 7