Scheduling strategies for multiprocessor real-time DSP

The authors explore the possibilities for automatic schedulers that result in low implementation cost and can target a broad class of DSP (digital signal processing) applications. They define four classes of scheduling strategies: (1) fully dynamic; (2) static assignment; (3) self-timed; and (4) fully static. Moving from (1) to (4), more scheduling activity is performed at compile time and less at run time. The authors argue that for most DSP applications, self-timed scheduling is the most attractive strategy. In this strategy, the assignment of actors to processors and the ordering of the firing of actors are determined by a compiler. Only the timing of the firing is determined at run time. The run-time cost of this determination is minimal. Furthermore, automatic scheduling techniques that fit this model are growing in generality and efficiency