Abstract
Many functions of operating systems are keen to be realised as feedback controllers. Doing so has a non negligible design impact, but also a significant payoff in terms of simplicity and generality. This paper presents a complete operating system scheduler, at present implemented in a microcontroller kernel, entirely composed of a PI-based control structure. The proposed scheduler is experimented with in several load conditions. In all of them, it performs in a comparable manner with respect to the classical (i.e., not control-based) policy optimised for that condition, as long as design assumptions such as schedulability are met. In addition, if some off-design situation is encountered, the proposed control-based scheduler definitely outperforms those not conceived as controllers.
Federico Terraneo
Associate Professor
Federico Terraneo received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in computer engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, and his Ph.D. degree in Information Technology from Politecnico di Milano in 2015. Currently he holds a Postdoc position at Politecnico di Milano. His research interests include embedded systems and the application of principles of control theory to the design of software systems. Since 2008 he has been the main developer and maintainer of the Miosix embedded operating system.