Energy-aware task scheduling with task synchronization for embedded real-time systems

Slowdown factors determine the extent of slowdown that a computing system can experience based on functional and performance requirements. Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) of a processor based on slowdown factors can lead to considerable energy savings. This paper addresses the problem of DVS in the presence of task synchronization. Tasks synchronize to enforce mutually exclusive access to the shared resources and can be blocked by lower priority tasks. Task slowdown factors that guarantee meeting all task deadlines are computed. Both static and dynamic priority scheduling viz. rate monotonic (RM) scheduling and earliest deadline first (EDF) scheduling, respectively, are studied.