A multiprocessor real-time scheduling simulation tool

Real-time systems have relied on multiprocessor architectures since some time ago. However, the proliferation of multi-core architectures, which have multiple processing units on a single chip, has increased the interest on such systems. As a consequence, scheduling techniques for multiprocessor architectures have received considerable attention in recent years. In the last decade, a lot of scheduling algorithms have been proposed. In many cases, the least upper bound for these algorithms is about 50% of the whole system utilization, which is very pessimistic. One alternative to verify the schedulability of a real-time task set with a larger system utilization on a multiprocessor system, is through the use of exhaustive simulation. In this paper, we introduce RealtssMP, a tool to perform scheduling analysis and simulation of multiprocessor real-time scheduling algorithms. The proposed tool has shown to be helpful in the evaluation of the performance of existing and new scheduling algorithms. Moreover, it can be be used as an educational tool.