Leakage Aware Scheduling for Maximum Temperature Minimization

As power consumption continues to increase dramatically in real-time systems, the thermal management has become a prominent issue. Taking leakage current into account, this paper focuses on the maximum temperature minimization for the processor executing a set of real-time tasks with a common deadline. We prove that, for a specific interval, constant-speed schedule applying the lowest constant speed will be superior to any other schedule using higher constant speed in maximum temperature minimization. By dividing the interval into two subintervals, we develop a step-down scheduling algorithm, providing each subinterval a unique processor speed to further reduce the maximum temperature. Compared with the optimal constant-speed schedule, the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the maximum temperature by up to 12%.