RTOS Support for Multicore Mixed-Criticality Systems

Mixed-criticality scheduling algorithms, which attempt to reclaim system capacity lost to worst-case execution time pessimism, seem to hold great promise for multi core real-time systems, where such loss is particularly severe. However, the unique nature of these algorithms gives rise to a number of major challenges for the would-be implementer. This paper describes the first implementation of a mixed-criticality scheduling framework on a multi core system. We experimentally evaluate design trade offs that arise when seeking to isolate tasks of different criticalities and to maintain overheads commensurate with a standard RTOS. We also evaluate a key property needed for such a system to be practical: that the system be robust to breaches of the optimistic execution-time assumptions used in mixed-criticality analysis.