Using Simultaneous Multithreaded Processors for Soft Real-Time Applications

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

This research concerns the use of simultaneous multithreaded (SMT) processors for soft real-time applications such as multimedia applications. SMT processors have the potential to provide high throughput by running multiple threads at the same time, and soft real-time applications are an increasingly important workload. The use of SMT processors for real-time applications, however, has largely been unexplored. Most work on SMT has been driven by the goal of increasing throughput. Real-time applications additionally require high schedulability (i.e., the ability to meet deadlines) and predictability. Further, such applications often run in energy and thermal power constrained environments. This work seeks to develop co-schedule selection and resource sharing algorithms (and consequent admission tests) for SMT processors that will (1) maximize instruction throughput, (2) maximize schedulability, (3) maximize execution time predictability, (4) minimize energy, and (5) minimize thermal power, for soft real-time applications such as multimedia applications. This is the first work that considers the issues of temporal schedulability and predictability, and integrates them with energy and thermal considerations, for real-time applications and SMT. Without this research, an increasingly important class of workloads would be unable to exploit an architectural advance that has provided large benefits in other domains.