DEUCON: Distributed End-to-End Utilization Control for Real-Time Systems

This paper presents the Distributed End-to-end Utiization CONtrol (DEUCON) algorithm. DEUCON can dynamically enforce desired CPU utilizations on all processors in a distributed real-time system despite uncertainties in the system workload. In contrast to earlier centralized control schemes, DEUCON is a distributed control algorithm that is systematically designed based on the Distributed Model Predictive Control theory. We decompose the global multi-processor utilization control problem into a set of localized subproblems, and design a peer-to-peer control structure where each local controller only needs to coordinate with a small number of neighbor processors. DEUCON can provide utilization guarantees similar to a centralized control algorithm, while significantly reducing the per-controller run-time overhead in terms of both computation and communication. Furthermore, it can tolerate considerable network delay and individual processor failures. Consequently, DEUCON can provide scalable and robust utilization control services for large distributed real-time systems that operate in unpredictable environments.