On recent advances in time/utility function real-time scheduling and resource management

Abstract

We argue that the key underpinning of the current state-of-the real-time practice - the priority artifact - and that of the current state-of-the real-time art - deadline-based timeliness optimality - are entirely inadequate for specifying timeliness objectives, for reasoning about timeliness behavior, and for performing resource management that can dependably satisfy timeliness objectives in many dynamic real-time systems. We argue that time/utility functions and the utility accrual scheduling paradigm provide a more generalized, adaptive, and flexible approach. Recent research in the utility accrual paradigm has significantly advanced the state-of-the-art of that paradigm. We survey these advances.