Scheduling for power reduction in a real-time system

Abstract

This paper describes how, through a combination of scheduling and buffer insertion, real-time systems may be optimized for power consumption while maintaining deadlines. Beginning with simple examples (components that have no internal pipelines and in which the only design freedoms are buffer insertion and scheduling), we illustrate the effect of adjusting the time at which data are processed on power consumption. Algorithms for optimizing the energy saving are proposed for several real-time system implementations including non-pipelined and pipelined. We also discuss extension to this preliminary work including selection of alternate processing units in order to reduce power consumption while maintaining deadlines.