Programmable temporal isolation through variable-bandwidth servers

We introduce variable-bandwidth servers (VBS) for scheduling and executing processes under programmable temporal isolation. A VBS is an extension of a constant-bandwidth server where throughput and latency of process execution can not only be controlled to remain constant across different competing workloads but also to vary in time as long as the resulting bandwidth stays below a given bandwidth cap. We have designed and implemented a VBS-based EDF-style constant-time scheduling algorithm, a constant-time admission test, and four alternative queue management plugins which influence the scheduling algorithm's overall temporal and spatial complexity. Experiments confirm the theoretical bounds in a number of microbenchmarks and demonstrate that the scheduler can effectively manage in constant time any number of processes up to available memory while maintaining response times of individual processes within a bounded range. We have also developed a small-footprint, bare-metal virtual machine that uses VBS for temporal isolation of multiple, concurrently running processes executing real code.