Virtual Machines (VM) are increasingly being considered for embedded/real-time systems since they allow for a platform-independent software development and provide isolation between applications. At RCS we experiment with using Xen for scheduling automotive real-time applications. The Xen Hypervisor is a widely accepted open-source VM monitor, which originated in the desktop/server domain. As a result, there are a number of issues that arise in the context of using Xen for real-time applications.

At RCS we have focused so far on one of the VM schedulers provided by Xen, viz., SEDF (Simple Earliest Deadline First). In this master’s thesis, the most popular credit-based (CB) scheduler should be analyzed, modeled and extended to meet real-time constraints. For more information see the page of the project VM-based Scheduling for Embedded Systems.