A scalable real-time synchronization protocol for distributed systems

A distributed protocol is proposed for the synchronization of real-time tasks that have variable resource requirements. The protocol is simple to implement and is intended for large-scale distributed or parallel systems in which processes communicate by message passing. Critical sections, even when nested, may be executed on any processor. Thus, given an adequate number of processors, the execution of critical sections can be completely distributed. More significantly, since the protocol enables the distributed allocation of critical sections, the benefits of various allocations can be analyzed and the system optimized to provide minimal blocking. This has important application in global optimization techniques for allocating large numbers of hard real-time tasks in multiprocessor systems.