Power-aware temporal isolation with variable-bandwidth servers

Variable-bandwidth servers (VBS) control process execution speed by allocating variable CPU bandwidth to processes. VBS enables temporal isolation of EDF-scheduled processes in the sense that the variance in CPU throughput and latency of each process is bounded independently of any other concurrently running processes. In this paper we aim at reducing CPU power consumption with VBS by CPU voltage and frequency scaling while maintaining temporal isolation. Scaling to lower frequencies is possible whenever there is CPU slack in the system. We first show that, in the presence of CPU slack, frequency scaling of EDF-scheduled, possibly non-periodic tasks (as they arise with VBS) is safe up to full CPU utilization and propose a frequency-scaling VBS algorithm that exploits CPU slack to minimize operating frequencies with maximal CPU utilization while maintaining temporal isolation. Additional power may be saved by redistributing computation time of individual processes while still maintaini...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: EMSOFT
• Authors: Silviu S. Craciunas, Christoph M. Kirsch, Ana Sokolova
• Keywords: CPU Utilization, EMSOFT 2010, Power Consumption, Software Engineering, Temporal Isolation