Atomics for a Real-time Virtual Machine

Опубликовано 6 сентября 2016, 6:10

This talk introduces a concurrency control abstraction, called preemptible atomic regions (PARs). PARs are a restricted form of software transactional memory that provide a convincing alternative to mutual exclusion monitors in commodity uniprocessor real-time systems. I will report on the implementation of Real-time Virtual Machine with built-in support for atomicity. The predictability requirements of real-time systems and the rich source language (Java) present a number of challenges for an efficient implementation of atomicity. Furthermore, interoperability with existing code requires smooth integration with existing implementations of monitors that support priority inheritance or priority ceiling emulation. PARs have been evaluated on several real-time programs, including a fielded avionics application. The results show that atomicity can improve the response time of high-priority tasks without noticeably decreasing overall throughput.