Energy-Efficient Real-Time Scheduling of Tasks with Abortable Critical Sections

Abstract

In this paper, an energy-efficient scheduling algorithm, called ceiling-based conditional abortable scheduling (CB-CAS) algorithm, is proposed to schedule periodic hard real-time tasks in a non-ideal DVS processor. Based on the schedulability analysis, CB-CAS calculates a proper processor speed for task execution so that the energy consumption can be reduced without violating the timing constraints of tasks. For saving more energy, we also assume that the critical sections of tasks are abortable, which is a strategy originally proposed to reduce priority inversions. In this paper, CB-CAS introduces a conditional abort rule and a dynamic speed adjustment method to work with the rate monotonic scheduling algorithm and the priority ceiling protocol so that the energy consumption could be reduced further. Whenever two tasks are conflicting for the same resource, CB-CAS will examine the cost of blocking the higher-priority task and the cost of aborting the lower-priority task. CB-CAS will abort the lower-priority task and adjust the processor speed dynamically only if it is more energy efficient. The schedulability analysis and the properties of CB-CAS are given in this paper. The capabilities of CB-CAS were also evaluated by a series of experiments, for which we have some encouraging results.