Schedulability analysis for tasks with static and dynamic offsets

In this paper we present an extension to current schedulability analysis techniques for periodic tasks with offsets, scheduled under a preemptive fixed priority scheduler. Previous techniques allowed only static offsets restricted to being smaller than the task periods. With the extension presented in this paper, we eliminate this restriction and we allow both static and dynamic offsets. The most significant application of this extension is in the analysis of multiprocessor and distributed systems. We show that we can achieve a significant increase of the maximum schedulable utilization by using the new technique, as opposed to using previously known worst-case analysis techniques for distributed systems.