GHOST: A Tool for Simulation and Analysis of Real-Time Scheduling Algorithms

This paper describes a flexible tool for the simulation and analysis of real-time applications characterized by different classes of tasks. Flexibility is achieved by allowing the user to define new scheduling algorithms directly in C language, specify the statistical characteristics of the workload, and describe the metrics and the experiments to be performed in the simulation. Tasks can be periodic or aperiodic, and can be characterized by different levels of criticality. Each task class can be handled by a separate scheduling policy, and all policies are integrated by a class scheduler, also defined by the user. Access to shared resources can be simulated by defining specific concurrency control protocols, such as Priority Inheritance, Priority Ceiling, or other user-defined protocols. The simulator has been extensively tested and used for evaluating the performance of several novel scheduling algorithms and is currently being used for research and education. 1 Introduction GHOST (..