Energy-aware partitioning for multiprocessor real-time systems

In this paper, we address the problem of partitioning periodic real-time tasks in a multiprocessor platform by considering both feasibility and energy-awareness perspectives: our objective is to compute the feasible partitioning that results in minimum energy consumption on multiple identical processors by using variable voltage earliest-deadline-first scheduling. We show that the problem is NP-hard in the strong sense on m ≥ 2 processors even when feasibility is guaranteed a priori. Then, we develop our framework where load balancing plays a major role in producing energy-efficient partitionings. We evaluate the feasibility and energy-efficiency performances of partitioning heuristics experimentally.