Techniques to increase the schedulable utilization of cache-based preemptive real-time systems

Nowadays, cache memories are applicable to real-time systems with the help of tools that obtain the worst-case execution time (WCET) of cached program s. However, these tools do not allow preemption, because from the point of view of program analysis, the number of preemptions is unknown. To face thi s problem, the cache-related preemption cost can be considered in the sched ulability analysis, or annulled by the use of private cache partitions. Thi s paper comprises a number of techniques using the first or both solutions. This paper also explores the harmonic relationships among tasks to improve the estimation of the cache interference in the analysis. (C) 2000 Publish ed by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.