Scheduling Periodic Real-Time Tasks with Inter-Task Synchronisation

This paper presents a new FPGA-based task scheduler that has a dedicated support of periodic hard real-time tasks in addition to aperiodic tasks. Whenever a period of a periodic task is elapsed, the task is scheduled automatically. The proposed scheduler is using Earliest Deadline First (EDF) algorithm. For task synchronisation, the scheduler supports temporary suspension of tasks with automatic resumption of tasks. Thanks to FPGA implementation of the scheduler and its priority queues, the scheduler operations take two clock cycles regardless of the number of tasks. The paper contains synthesis results for Intel FPGA Cyclone V.