handling overload of target sensitive real-time applications for increased system utility and improved resource usage
The gravitational task model allows target sensitive applications (e.g. multimedia and control) to express target points for maximum utility, and a utility decay as a function of the deviation from these points. The compromise among their deviations for maximized utility is calculated based on a physical pendulum analogy. However, in an overloaded system a compromise among all jobs does not necessarily incur in maximized utility. In this paper we propose an overload handling mechanism for the gravitational task model which accounts for both system load and target sensitivity of applications. This mechanism considers the trade-off between aborting and shifting the execution of a job for resulting increased utility accrual and improved resource usage. The heuristic to abort jobs is based on their utility and amount of consumed resources. An aborted job does not yield any utility, but frees resources that can be exploited by other jobs for increased utility accrual. A multimedia case study shows that our mechanism reduces frame display jitter and improves resource usage.
overload target sensitivity utility adaptivity scheduling