Energy-aware adaptive checkpointing in embedded real-time systems

We present an integrated approach that provides fault tolerance and dynamic power management for a real-time task executing in an embedded system. Fault tolerance is achieved through an adaptive checkpointing scheme that dynamically adjusts the checkpointing interval during task execution. Adaptive checkpointing is then combined with a dynamic voltage scaling scheme to achieve power reduction. The resulting energy-aware adaptive checkpointing scheme uses a dynamic voltage scaling criterion that is based not only on the slack in task execution but also on the occurrences of faults during task execution. Simulation results show that compared to previous methods, the proposed approach significantly reduces power consumption and increases the likelihood of timely task completion in the presence of faults.