Design and evaluation of an adaptive real-time microprocessor

Since most modern microprocessors are optimized for good average performance, their worst case performance is hard to predict. Therefore, the in time execution of real-time threads at any time is difficult to guarantee. So, in this paper we present an adaptive real-time microprocessor, which is fitted with a closed control loop. The controller is aware of the loss of performance due to various latency causing events at runtime and is able to respond to them by adapting the aimed throughput of each running thread. Afterwards, we evaluate our microprocessor with an embedded benchmark, discuss different parameters of the controller and show that a well-defined performance can be guaranteed by the use of control theory.