Abstract
The subject is part of the ITEA european project HYADES which attempts to promote
SMP computers as platforms for HPC real-time applications. An asymmetric real-time
scheduling, called ARTiS, has been proposed. The first evaluations have proven viabil-
ity of the solution.
The principle of ARTiS is to distinguish two types of processors, the processors
which can execute every kind of task and the processors prohibiting execution of real-
time endangering functions. When a task attempts to execute such function, it will
be automatically migrated. The power of the ARTiS model is to allow simultanously
ressources reservation for real-time applications and load-balancing between real-time
and non real-time processors.
The Linux original load-balancing mechanism is not aware of this asymmetry be-
tween the processors. We have studied and listed all the possible migrations between
the processors. From this study, modifications to the orginal mechanism were specified.
More specificaly, we propose:
•the use of lock-free queues associated to a “push”trigger policy,
•a local designation policy which can estimate the probability of the future migra-
tions of the tasks,
•an evaluation of the processors load which distinguish between the real-time tasks
and the others.
Finally, the implementation into the ARTiS kernel is in progress and the design of
specific measurement tests were written in order to verify and estimate the enhance-
ments provided by this implementation.
Keywords: Load-balancing, real-time, scheduling, SMP, multi-processor, Linux.