Compiler support for real-time programs

Abstract

Introduction One of the primary challenges of building a real-time system lies in balancing its functional requirements against its temporal requirements. Functional requirements define valid translations from inputs into outputs. As such they are realized by a set of programs, which consume CPU time. Temporal requirements, on the other hand, place upper and lower bounds between occurrences of events [3, 14]. An example is: the robot arm must receive a next-position update every 10 ms. Such a constraint arises from the system's requirements, or from a detailed analysis of the application environment. Thus temporal requirements implicitly limit the time that can be provided by the system 's resources. When a balance between the functional and temporal constraints is not achieved, the result is often a costly and arduous process of system tuning. This typically involves multiple phases of instrumentation and hand-op