Opaque analysis for resource sharing in compositional real-time systems

In this paper we propose opaque analysis methods to integrate dependent real-time components into hierarchical fixed-priority scheduled systems. To arbitrate mutually exclusive resource access between components, we consider two existing protocols: HSRP - comprising overrun with and without payback - and SIRAP. An opaque analysis allows to postpone the choice of a synchronization protocol until component integration time. First, we identify the sources of pessimism in the existing analysis techniques and we conclude that both protocols assume different models in their local analysis. In particular, the compositional analysis for overrun with payback (OWP) is not opaque and is pessimistic. The latter makes OWP expensive compared to its counter part without a payback mechanism (ONP). This paper presents an opaque and less pessimistic OWP analysis. Secondly, SIRAP requires more timing information to perform a task-level schedulability analysis. In many practical situations, however, detailed timing characteristics of tasks are hard to obtain. We introduce an opaque analysis for SIRAP using the analysis of ONP to reduce the required timing information during the local analysis. We show that the analysis for ONP cannot deem systems schedulable which are infeasible with SIRAP. The SIRAP analysis may therefore reduce the required system resources of a component by sacrificing the choice for an arbitrary synchronization protocol at system integration time.