Feedback Thermal Control for Real-time Systems

—Thermal control is crucial to real-time systems as excessive processor temperature can cause system failure or unacceptable performance degradation due to hardware throttling. Real-time systems face significant challenges in thermal management as they must avoid processor overheating while still delivering desired real-time performance. Furthermore, many real-time systems must handle a broad range of uncertainties in system and environmental conditions. To address these challenges, this paper presents Thermal Control under Utilization Bound (TCUB), a novel thermal control algorithm specifically designed for real-time systems. TCUB employs a nested feedback loop that dynamically controls both processor temperature and CPU utilization through task rate adaptation. Rigorously modeled and designed based on control theory, TCUB can maintain both desired processor temperature and CPU utilization, thereby avoiding processor overheating and maintaining desired soft realtime performance. A...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: RTAS
• Authors: Yong Fu, Nicholas Kottenstette, Yingming Chen, Chenyang Lu, Xenofon D. Koutsoukos, Hongan Wang
• Keywords: Broad Range, Embedded Systems, Processor Temperature, Real-time Systems, RTAS 2010