A CONTROL-THEORETIC DESIGN AND ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR RESILIENT HARD REAL-TIME SYSTEMS by PRADEEP

A CONTROL-THEORETIC DESIGN AND ANALYSIS FRAMEWORK FOR RESILIENT HARD REAL-TIME SYSTEMS We introduce a new design metric called system-resiliency which characterizes the maximum unpredictable external stresses that any hard-real-time performance mode can withstand. Our proposed systemresiliency framework addresses resiliency determination for real-time systems with physical and hardware limitations. Furthermore, our framework advises the system designer about the feasible trade-offs between external system resources for the system operating modes on a real-time system that operates in a multi-parametric resiliency environment. Modern multi-modal real-time systems degrade the system’s operational modes as a response to unpredictable external stimuli. During these mode transitions, real-time systems should demonstrate a reliable and graceful degradation of service. Many control-theoretic-based system design approaches exist. Although they permit real-time systems to operate under various physical constraints, none of them allows the system designer to predict the system-resiliency over multi-constrained operating environment. Our framework fills this gap; the proposed framework consists of two components: the design-phase and runtime control. With the design-phase analysis, the designer predicts the behavior of the real-time system for variable external conditions. Also, the runtime controller navigates the system to the best desired target using advanced control-theoretic techniques. Further, our framework addresses the system resiliency of both uniprocessor and multicore processor systems. As a proof of concept, we first introduce a design metric called thermal-resiliency, which characterizes the maximum external thermal stress that any hard-real-time performance mode can withstand. We verify the thermal-resiliency for the external thermal stresses on a uniprocessor system through a physical testbed. We show how to solve some of the issues and challenges of designing predictable real-time systems that guarantee hard deadlines even under transitions between modes in an unpredictable thermal environment where environmental temperature may dynamically change using our new metric. We extend the derivation of thermal-resiliency to multicore systems and determine the limitations of external thermal stress that any hard-real-time performance mode can withstand. Our control-theoretic framework allows the system designer to allocate asymmetric processing resources upon a multicore pro-