When thermal control meets sensor noise: analysis of noise-induced temperature error

—Thermal control is critical for real-time systems as overheated processors can result in serious performance degradation or even system breakdown due to hardware throttling. The major challenges in thermal control for real-time systems are (i) the need to enforce both real-time and thermal constraints; (ii) uncertain system dynamics; and (iii) thermal sensor noise. Previous studies have resolved the first two, but the practical issue of sensor noise has not been properly addressed yet. In this paper, we introduce a novel thermal control algorithm that can appropriately handle thermal sensor noise. Our key observation is that even a small zero-mean sensor noise can induce a significant steady-state error between the target and the actual temperature of a processor. This steady-state error is contrary to our intuition that zero-mean sensor noise induces zero-mean fluctuations. We show that an intuitive attempt to resolve this unusual situation is not effective at all. By a rigorous...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2015
• Where: RTAS
• Authors: Dohwan Kim, Kyung-Joon Park, Yongsoon Eun, Sang Hyuk Son, Chenyang Lu
• Keywords: Embedded Systems, RTAS 2015