A framework for automated competitive analysis of on-line scheduling of firm-deadline tasks

We present a flexible framework for the automated competitive analysis of on-line scheduling algorithms for firm-deadline real-time tasks based on multi-objective graphs: Given a task set and an on-line scheduling algorithm specified as a labeled transition system, along with some optional safety, liveness, and/or limit-average constraints for the adversary, we automatically compute the competitive ratio of the algorithm w.r.t. A clairvoyant scheduler. We demonstrate the flexibility and power of our approach by comparing the competitive ratio of several on-line algorithms, including Dover, that have been proposed in the past, for various task sets. Our experimental results reveal that none of these algorithms is universally optimal, in the sense that there are task sets where other schedulers provide better performance. Our framework is hence a very useful design tool for selecting optimal algorithms for a given application.