Dual Periodic Resource Model

The paper considers compositional scheduling for hierarchical real-time systems using periodic resource models, which has been extensively studied in the past. We identify an unrealistic assumption in the existing literature that can make the computed component interfaces unimplementable. Namely, resource bandwidth can be expressed using arbitrary rational numbers. We show that resource bandwidth, computed by an algorithm that removes this assumption becomes overly pessimistic, and offer a new notion of a dual-periodic resource model (DPRM) interface that improves resource bandwidth of the interface. We study composition using DPRM interfaces and show properties of the new approach in terms of required resource bandwidth and preemption overhead

Removing Abstraction Overhead in the Composition of Hierarchical Real-Time System

The hierarchical real-time scheduling framework is a widely accepted model to facilitate the design and analysis of the increasingly complex real-time systems. Interface abstraction and composition are the key issues in the hierarchical scheduling framework analysis. Schedulability is essential to guarantee that the timing requirements of all components are satisfied. In order for the design to be resource efficient, the composition must be bandwidth optimal. Associativity is desirable for open systems in which components may be added or deleted at run time. Previous techniques on compositional scheduling are either not resource efficient in some aspects, or cannot achieve optimality and associativity at the same time. In this paper, several important properties regarding the periodic resource model are identified. Based on those properties, we propose a novel interface abstraction and composition framework which achieves schedulability, optimality, and associativity. Our approach eliminates abstraction overhead in the composition

Improving Resource Utilization for Compositional Scheduling Using DPRM Interfaces

The paper revisits the generation of interfaces for compositional real-time scheduling. Following an established line of research, we use periodic resource models in component interfaces to describe resource demand of the component. We identify a deficiency of existing interface generation algorithms that may require parameters of the resource model to be infeasibly small. We propose a new algorithm for interface generation that avoids this deficiency. We further demonstrate that resource utilization can be improved by using dual-periodic resource model (DPRM) interfaces that employ two periodic resource models to characterize the resource demand more precisely

CARTS: A Tool for Compositional Analysis of Real-Time Systems

This paper demonstrates CARTS, a compositional analysis tool for real-time systems. We presented an overview of the underlying theoretical foundation and the architecture design of the tool. CARTS is open source and available for free download at http://rtg.cis.upenn.edu/carts/

Detecting Covert Timing Channels with Time-Deterministic Replay

This paper presents a mechanism called timedeterministic replay (TDR) that can reproduce the execution of a program, including its precise timing. Without TDR, reproducing the timing of an execution is difficult because there are many sources of timing variability – such as preemptions, hardware interrupts, cache effects, scheduling decisions, etc. TDR uses a combination of techniques to either mitigate or eliminate most of these sources of variability. Using a prototype implementation of TDR in a Java Virtual Machine, we show that it is possible to reproduce the timing to within 1.85% of the original execution, even on commodity hardware. The paper discusses several potential applications of TDR, and studies one of them in detail: the detection of a covert timing channel. Timing channels can be used to exfiltrate information from a compromised machine; they work by subtly varying the timing of the machine’s outputs, and it is this variation that can be detected with TDR. Unlike prior solutions, which generally look for a specific type of timing channel, our approach can detect a wide variety of channels with high accuracy

Realizing Compositional Scheduling Through Virtualization

We present a co-designed scheduling framework and platform architecture that support compositional scheduling of real-time systems. The architecture is built on Xen virtualization platform, and relies on compositional scheduling theory that uses periodic resource models as component interfaces. We implement resource models as periodic servers and consider enhancements to periodic server design that significantly improve response times of tasks and resource utilization in the system while preserving theoretical schedulability results. We present an extensive evaluation of our implementation using workloads from an avionics case study as well as synthetic ones

An analytical model of a clamped sandwich beam under low-impulse mass impact

An analytical model is developed to examine a low impulsive projectile impact on a fully clamped sandwich beams by considering the coupled responses of the core and the face sheets. Firstly, based on the dynamic properties of foam cores, the sandwich beam is modeled as two rigid perfectly-plastic beams connected by rigid perfectly-plastic springs. Different from the previous sandwich beam model, the transverse compression and bending effects of the foam core are considered in the whole deformation process. Based on this model, different coupling mechanism of sandwich beams are constructed so that an analytical solution considering small deformation is derived. The coupled dynamic responses of sandwich beams with different core strengths are investigated. The results indicate that this model improves the prediction accuracy of the responses of the sandwich beams, and is available for the situation when the sandwich beam undergoes moderate global deformation

Individual Differences in Virtual Environments

This paper summarises the results of several studies of individual differences among users navigating in virtual environments.These differences relate to performance of navigational tasks, and the degree of sense of presence experienced by the users. The individual differences addressed in this paper refer primarily to personality and demographic factors. The possibility of improving the design of virtual environments for a better accommodation of these differences is discussed