Towards an efficient approach for resource sharing in real-time multiprocessor systems

Abstract

Supporting resource sharing in multiprocessor architectures is one of the major problems that limit the potential performance benefits of using such architectures for real-time systems. Many approaches and algorithms have been proposed to support resource sharing, however, most of them impose either high blocking times on tasks or require a large memory allocation. In this paper we investigate the possibility of combining the lock-based approaches and wait-free approaches (using multiple buffers) in order to decrease both the blocking times that may affect the schedulability of tasks and the required memory. To achieve this, we propose a solution based on evaluating the maximum allowed blocking time on each task according to the schedulability analysis, and then find the minimum memory allocation for each resource that limits the blocking times on tasks to be less than the maximum allowed blocking times.