Resource holding times: Computation and optimization

In scheduling hard-real-time systems, the primary objective is to meet all deadlines. We study the scheduling of such systems with the secondary objective of minimizing the duration of time for which the system locks each shared resource. We abstract out this objective into the resource hold time (rht)-the largest length of time that may elapse between the instant that a system locks a resource and the instant that it subsequently releases the resource, and study properties of the rht. We present an algorithm for computing resource hold times for every resource in a task system that is scheduled using Earliest Deadline First scheduling, with resource access arbitrated using the Stack Resource Policy. We also present and prove the correctness of algorithms for decreasing these rht's without changing the semantics of the application or compromising application feasibility.