Dynamic Thermal and Timeliness Guarantees for Distributed Real-Time Embedded Systems

Distributed realtime embedded systems have stringent requirements for key performance properties, such as end-to-end timeliness and reliability, in order to operate properly. In recent years, with the continuously decreasing feature size and increasing demand for computation capabilities, today´s realtime embedded systems face an increasing probability of overheating and even thermal failures. As a result, their temperature must be explicitly controlled for improved reliability. While a variety of control algorithms have been proposed for either realtime guarantees or thermal management in an isolated manner, this paper proposes a coordinated control solution that can provide simultaneous thermal and timeliness guarantees for distributed realtime embedded systems running in unpredictable environments. Our control solution features a novel coordination design, which allows the thermal and timeliness control loops to run on their respective desired small timescales for prompt control actions and yet achieve theoretically guaranteed control accuracy and system stability. In addition, while most existing work relies solely on simulations, we present empirical results on a physical testbed to demonstrate the efficacy of our control solution.