Real-Time Systems

Safety-critical systems can suffer from hardware obsolescence and scalability issues. Moreover, they require high availability and ease of hardware re-usability and reconfiguration. Cloud computing can help resolve such issues and requirements. However, the lack of strong isolation and shared resource (e.g., CPU, cache, memory controller, and network) guarantees in the current cloud paradigm limits the use of clouds for safety-critical applications.

To support predictable executions as cloud-based service, we propose to monitor, control, and coordinate the cloud nodes and their shared resources at the node and global level by adding to the cloud a resource orchestration and coordination layer inspired by the framework developed, among others, in the  DREAMS and ACTORS projects. It helps ensure that the safety-critical applications meet their end-to-end deadline and provides support for enabling fault tolerance and improving the Quality-of-Service achieved by non-critical applications.

Related videos:

  • Overview of RT-cloud: railway use case from SECREDAS project Video
  • RT-cloud: railway use case: full paper  Video
  • Overview of time-and event-triggered scheduling in Linux/KVM for RT-cloud Video

Related publications:

1. Real-time cloud: Railway use case

  • G. Gala, G. Fohler, P. Tummeltshammer, S. Resch, and R. Hametner, “RT-cloud: Virtualization technologies and cloud computing for railway use-case,” in 24th IEEE International Symposium On Real-Time distributed Computing (IEEE ISORC), IEEE, 2021

2. Real-time Kubernetes extensions

  • Gabriele Monaco, Gautam Gala, and Gerhard Fohler, Shared Resource Orchestration Extensions for Kubernetes to Support Real-Time Cloud Container, 26th International Symposium On Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC'23), Nashville, Tennessee, USA.
  • Gabriele Monaco, Gautam Gala, and Gerhard Fohler, "Extensions for Shared Resource Orchestration in Kubernetes to Support RT-Cloud Containers" in ECRTS Real-time Cloud (RT-Cloud) 2022 workshop.

3. Time-and Event-Triggered Scheduling in Linux/KVM for real-time cloud

  • Gautam Gala, Isser Kadusale and Gerhard Fohler, "Joint Time-and Event-Triggered Scheduling in the Linux Kernel", Operating Systems Platforms for Embedded Real-Time applications (OSPERT) 2023 workshop co-hosted with 35th Euromicro conference on Real-time systems.
  • Isser Kadusale, Gautam Gala and Gerhard Fohler, "Energy-aware Time- and Event-triggered KVM Nodes", Real-time Cloud (RT-Cloud) 2023 workshop co-hosted with 35th Euromicro conference on Real-time systems.
  • Gautam Gala, Javier Castillo Rivera and Gerhard Fohler, "Work-in-Progress: Cloud Computing for Time-Triggered Safety-Critical Systems" in 42nd IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), December 2021 RTSS_WIP.mp4

4. Memory access isolation/regulation in real-time cloud

  • Giorgio Farina, Gautam Gala, Marcello Cinque, and Gerhard Fohler, Enabling memory access isolation in real-time cloud systems using Intel’s detection/regulation capabilities, Journal of Systems Architecture, 2023.
  • Giorgio Farina, Gautam Gala, Marcello Cinque and Gerhard Fohler, "Assessing Intel's memory bandwidth allocation for resource limitation in real-time systems" in 25th IEEE International Symposium On Real-Time distributed Computing (IEEE ISORC), 2022.