Simplified Design Flow

(a picture from Ingo Sander)

Hardware architecture
So far, we have talked about only single processor systems
Concurrency implemented by scheduling

RT systems often consist of several processors

Multiprocessor systems
Tightly connected processors by a high-speed interconnect e.g.
cross-bar, bus, NoC (network on chip) etc.
Single processor with multi-thread

Distributed Systems
Loosely connected processors by a low-speed network e.g. CAN, Ethernet, Token
Ring etc. --

Multiprocessor vs.Distributed Systems

(examples)

Complete system

LAN

-- Local area distributed system (our focus)

(d)

Task Assignment
In the design flow:
First, the application is partitioned into tasks or task graphs.
At some stage, the execution times, communication costs, data
and control dependencies of all the tasks become known.

Task assignment determines

how many processors needed (bin-packing problem)
on which processor each task executes

This is a very complex problem (NP-hard)

Often done off-line
Often heuristics work

Example of Task Assignment

(or Task Partitioning)
P1

P2

P1

Task Assignment
The task models used in task assignment can vary in complexity
depending what considered/ignored:
Communication costs
Data and control dependencies
Resource requirements e.g. WCET, memory etc

In multi-core platforms with shared caches, communication

costs for tasks on the same chip may be very small
It is often meaningful to consider the execution time
requirement (WCET) and ignore communication in an early
design phase

Todays plan

Why multiprocessor?

What are multiprocessor systems

OS etc

Design RT systems on multiprocessors

energy, performance and predictability

Task Assigment

Multiprocessor scheduling

(semi-)partitioned scheduling
global scheduling

Why multiprocessor systems?

To get high performance and to reduce energy
consumption

Hardware: Trends
Multicore:
Requires
Parallel
Applications

Performance
[log]
1000

Single Core
100

10

Now

Year

Theoretically you may get:

Higher Performance
Increasing the cores -- unlimited computing power

Lower Power Consumption

Increasing the cores, decreasing the frequency
Performance (IPC) = Cores * F 2* Cores * F/2 Cores * F
Power = C * V2 * F 2* C * (V /2)2 * F/2 C * V2 /4 * F

same performance using of the energy (by

doubling the cores)

Keep the

This sounds great for embedded & real-time applications!

10

CPU frequency vs Power consumption

1.
2.
3.

Standard processor over-clocked 20%

Standard processor
Two standard processors each under-clocked 20%

Whats happening now?

General-Purpose Computing
(Symposium on High-Performance Chips, Hot Chips 21, Palo Alto, Aug 23-25, 2009)

4 cores in notebooks
12 cores in servers
AMD 12-core Magny-Cours will consume less energy
than previous generations with 6 cores

16 cores for IBM servers, Power 7

Embedded Systems
4 cores in ARM11 MPCore embedded processors

What next?
Manycores (>100s of cores) predicted to be here
in a few years e.g. Ericsson

What are multiprocessor systems?

Tightly connected processors by a high-speed
interconnect e.g. cross-bar, bus, NoC etc.

Typical Multicore Architecture

CPU

CPU

CPU

CPU

L1

L1

L1

L1

Bandwidth

Off-chip memory

L2 Cache
L1

L1

L1

L1

CPU

CPU

CPU

CPU

15

15

Single processor vs. multiprocessor OS

Each node is a complete system running

its own OS but sharing the memory

One master node running the OS

All nodes are sharing the OS kernel:

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP)

Multiprocessor scheduling

"Given a set J of jobs where job ji has length li and a number of processors mi,
what is the minimum possible time required to schedule all jobs in J on m
processors such that none overlap?"
Wikipedia

That is, design a schedule such that the response time of the
last tasks is minimized
(Alternatively, given M processors and N tasks,
find a mapping from tasks to processors such that
all the tasks are schedulable)
The problem is NP-complete
It is also known as the load balancing problem

Multiprocessor scheduling
static and dynamic task assignment
Partitioned scheduling
Static task assignment
Each task may only execute on a fixed processor
No task migration

Semi-partitioned scheduling
Static task assignment
Each instance (or part of it) of a task is assigned to a fixed processor
task instance or part of it may migrate

Global scheduling
Dynamic task assignment
Any instance of any task may execute on any processor
Task migration

Multiprocessor Scheduling
Global Scheduling

Partitioned Scheduling

Partitioned Scheduling
with Task Splitting

new task
4
waiting queue

22

22

23

1
cpu 1

cpu 2

6
cpu 3

cpu 1

cpu 2

cpu 3

cpu 1

cpu 2

cpu 3

Multiprocessor (multicore) Scheduling

Significantly more difficult:
Timing anomalies
Hard to identify the worst-case scenario

Bin-packing/NP-hard problems
Multiple resources e.g. caches, bandwidth

Underlying causes
The root of all evil in global scheduling: (Liu, 1969):

The simple fact that a task can use only one processor even
when several processors are free at the same time adds a
surprising amount of difficulty to the scheduling of multiple
processors.

Dhalls effect: with RM, DM and EDF, some lowutilization task sets can be un-schedulable regardless
of how many processors are used.
Hard-to-find critical instant: a critical instant does not
always occur when a task arrives at the same time as
all its higher-priority tasks.

Example: Anomali under Resource constraints

5 tasks on 2 CPUs, sharing 1 resource
Static assignment T1, T2 on P1 and T3, T4, T5 on P2
Reducing the computation time of T1 will increase the response time!

critical section
P1

P2

3
0

P1

4
4

P2

5
8

10

12

14

16

18

20

22

20

22

2
3

blocking

4
4

10

12

5
14

16

18

Best Known Results

80

From Uppsala

Liu and Laylands

Utilization Bound

RTAS 2010

70
60

69.3

50
40

65

30
20

38

10

[OPODIS08]

Fixed
Priority

50

50

50

[TPDS05]

[ECRTS03]

[RTSS04]

Dynamic
Priority

Fixed
Priority

Dynamic
Priority

66
[RTCSA06]

Fixed
Priority

Dynamic
Priority

Task Splitting
Global

Partitioned

Multiprocessor Scheduling

Global Scheduling
Global Scheduling

new task
4
waiting queue
2

1
cpu 1

cpu 2

6
cpu 3

Global scheduling
All ready tasks are kept in a global queue
When selected for execution, a task can be
dispatched to any processor, even after being
preempted

Global scheduling Algorithms

EDF Unfortunately not optimal!
No simple schedulability test known (only sufficient)

Fixed Priority Scheduling e.g. RM

Difficult to find the optimal priority order
Difficult to check the schedulability

Any algorithm for single processor scheduling may

work, but schedulability analysis is non-trivial.

Global Scheduling: + and Advantages:

Supported by most multiprocessor operating systems
Windows NT, Solaris, Linux, ...

Effective utilization of processing resources (if it works)

Unused processor time can easily be reclaimed at run-time (mixture of hard
and soft RT tasks to optimize resource utilization)

Disadvantages:
Few results from single-processor scheduling can be used
No optimal algorithms known except idealized assumption (Pfair sch)
Poor resource utilization for hard timing constraints
No more than 50% resource utilization can be guaranteed for hard RT tasks

Suffers from scheduling anomalies

Adding processors and reducing computation times and other parameters can
actually decrease optimal performance in some scenarios!

Partition-Based Scheduling
Partitioned Scheduling

cpu 1

cpu 2

cpu 3

Partitioned scheduling
Two steps:
Determine a mapping of tasks to processors
Perform run-time scheduling

Example: Partitioned with EDF

Assign tasks to the processors such that no processors
capacity is exceeded (utilization bounded by 1.0)
Schedule each processor using EDF

Bin-packing algorithms
The problem concerns packing objects of varying
sizes in boxes (bins) with the objective of
minimizing number of used boxes.
Solutions (Heuristics): Next Fit and First Fit

Application to multiprocessor systems:

Bins are represented by processors and objects by tasks.
The decision whether a processor is full or not is derived
from a utilization-based schedulability test.

Rate-Monotonic-First-Fit (RMFF):
[Dhall and Liu, 1978]
First, sort the tasks in the order of increasing periods.
Task Assignment
All tasks are assigned in the First Fit manner starting from
the task with highest priority
A task can be assigned to a processor if all the tasks
assigned to the processor are RM-schedulable i.e.
the total utilization of tasks assigned on that processor is bounded
by n(21/n-1) where n is the number of tasks assigned.
(One may also use the Precise test to get a better assignment!)

Add a new processor if needed for the RM-test.

Partitioned scheduling
Advantages:
Most techniques for single-processor scheduling
are also applicable here

Partitioning of tasks can be automated

Solving a bin-packing algorithm

Disadvantages:
Cannot exploit/share all unused processor time
May have very low utilization, bounded by 50%

Partition-Based Scheduling with Task-Splitting

Partitioned Scheduling
with Task Splitting

22

22

23

cpu 1

cpu 2

cpu 3

Partition-Based scheduling with Task Splitting

High resource utilization
High overhead (due to task migration)

Fixed-Priority Multiprocessor Scheduling