Minimizing the cost of synchronisations in the WCET of real-time parallel programs

Abstract

Designing time-predictable architectures to support the requirements of hard real-time systems is the goal of several research projects. In this paper we assume that such platforms exist and we focus on the timing analysis of parallel real-time applications. One of the main challenges is to determine how much the delays induced by software constructs such as synchronisations can impact the worst-case execution times (WCETs) of parallel threads. In this paper, we refine state-of-the-art analysis: first, we derive more accurate estimations of stalls at critical sections; second, we introduce new locking primitives that minimise stall times on the worst-case path. Experimental results show noticeable improvements on the WCETs of benchmarks.