List Scheduling in Embedded Systems Under Memory Constraints

• Published in: International journal of parallel programming Vol. 43; no. 6; pp. 1103 - 1128
• Main Authors: Arras, Paul-Antoine, Fuin, Didier, Jeannot, Emmanuel, Stoutchinin, Arthur, Thibault, Samuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.12.2015; Springer Nature B.V; Springer Verlag
• Subjects: Algorithms; Computer programming; Computer Science; Decoding; Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing; Dynamic tests; Embedded Systems; Footprints; Graphs; Heuristic; Image processing; Parallel processing; Priorities; Processor Architectures; Scheduling; Software; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Studies; Tasks; Theory of Computation; Task graphs; Scheduling; Video decoding; System on chip; Memory
• ISSN: 0885-7458; 1573-7640; 1573-7640
• DOI: 10.1007/s10766-014-0338-1

Video decoding and image processing in embedded systems are subject to strong resource constraints, particularly in terms of memory. List-scheduling heuristics with static priorities (HEFT, SDC, etc.) being the oft-cited solutions due to both their good performance and their low complexity, we propose a method aimed at introducing the notion of memory into them. Moreover, we show that through adequate adjustment of task priorities and judicious resort to insertion-based policy, speedups up to 20 % can be achieved. We also show that our technique allows to prevent deadlock and to substantially reduce the required memory footprint compared to classic list-scheduling heuristics. Lastly, we propose a methodology to assess the appropriateness of dynamic scheduling in this context.