RTGPU: Real-Time Computing with Graphics Processing Units: Architectures, Challenges, and Solutions for Time-Critical GPU Systems

This is a comprehensive and forward-thinking book that addresses one of the most pressing challenges in modern computing: how to leverage the immense computational power of GPUs within the stringent constraints of real-time systems. As industries demand faster, smarter, and more responsive technologies―autonomous vehicles, robotics, edge AI, and cyber-physical systems―the ability to deliver deterministic performance on inherently non-deterministic hardware becomes critical.

This book dives deep into the architectural mismatch between GPUs and real-time requirements, unravelling the complexity of preemption limitations, variable execution times, synchronization bottlenecks, and resource contention. It presents a unified view of the field, combining foundational knowledge with state-of-the-art solutions, ranging from innovative scheduling algorithms and multitasking frameworks to power-aware design strategies and emerging hardware paradigms.

Clear, rigorous, and research-driven, this book is an essential reference for computer scientists, embedded systems engineers, and academic researchers looking to design the next generation of real-time, GPU-accelerated systems. It doesn’t just review the field―it defines it.

Atiyeh Gheibi-Fetrat received her M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. Her research interests include GPU and multi-GPU architectures, scheduling methodologies, Solid-State Drive (SSD) systems, and Networks-on-Chip (NoCs), with a particular focus on performance optimization, resource management, and architectural innovations in contemporary computing systems.

Sepideh Safari received the Ph.D. degree in computer engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 2021. She was a visiting researcher in the Chair for Embedded Systems (CES), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany, from 2019 to 2021. She is now a senior postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran. Her research interests include scheduling of real-time systems, low-power/energy design of embedded and cyber-physical systems, fault-tolerant mixed-criticality systems, scheduling algorithms, and distributed multicore systems with a focus on dependability/reliability. She is now the associate editor of Elsevier Microprocessors and Microsystems (MICPRO) journal. She was also a technical program committee (TPC) member of several conferences like RTSS-2024-2025, RTAS 2024, ECRTS 2025, DSD-2022-2023-2024-2025, CPSAT-2024, etc.

Shaahin Hessabi is an associate professor in computer science and engineering at the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. He received the BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran, in 1986 and 1990, respectively, and the Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. He joined Sharif University of Technology in 1996 and is the Efficient Processing and Communication Architectures (EPCA) Lab director. He has published more than 120 refereed papers in related areas. His research interests include cyber-physical systems, reconfigurable and heterogeneous architectures, embedded systems, and system-on-chip. He has served as the program chair, general chair, and program committee member of various conferences, like DATE, NOCS, NoCArch, and CADS.

Hamid Sarbazi-Azad is currently a professor in computer science and engineering at the Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. His research interests include high-performance computer/memory architectures, NoCs and SoCs, parallel and distributed systems, social networks, and storage systems, on which he has published over 400 refereed papers. He received the Khwarizmi International Award in 2006, the TWAS Young Scientist Award in engineering sciences in 2007, and the Sharif University Distinguished Researcher awards in 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2013. He has served on the editorial boards of IEEE transactions on Computers, ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE Computer Architecture Letters, Elsevier's Computers and Electrical Engineering, and Sustainable Computing journals.