An Average-Case Analysis for Rate-Monotonic Multiprocessor Real-time Scheduling

We introduce the "First Fit Matching Periods" algorithm for static-priority multiprocessor scheduling of periodic tasks with implicit deadlines and show that it yields asymptotically optimal processor assignments if utilization values are chosen uniformly at random. More precisely we prove that the expected waste is upper bounded by O(n^(3/4) * (log n)^(3/8)). Here the waste denotes the ratio of idle times, cumulated over all processors and n gives the number of tasks. The algorithm can be implemented to run in time O(n log n) and even in the worst case, an asymptotic approximation ratio of 2 is guaranteed. Experiments yield an expected waste proportional to n^0.70, indicating that the above upper bound on the expected waste is almost tight.