FP/FIFO Feasibility Conditions with Kernel Overheads for Periodic Tasks on an Event Driven OSEK System

Abstract

In this paper we show how to take into account kernel overheads in classical real-time feasibility conditions for fixed priority (FP) scheduling where tasks having the same fixed priority are scheduled FP/FIFO. We consider the periodic task model with arbitrary deadlines and an event driven OSEK kernel. The feasibility conditions are based on the worst case response time computation of the tasks. We identify the sources of kernel overheads that influence the response time of the tasks. In such a system the overheads are due to the context switching that activates/terminates and reschedules tasks and to the granularity of the periodic timer used to implement the periodic task model. We show how to take into account those overheads in the classical FP/FIFO feasibility conditions. We compare the worst case response time obtained with kernel overhead to the response time obtained on a real event driven OSEK implementation. We show that the kernel overheads cannot be neglected and that the theoretical results are valid and can be used for a real-time dimensioning.