Real Time Systems

A brief introduction for ECE 573 students

Subra Ganesan
Professor, Oakland University, Rochester, MI 48309

Rochester, MI 48309

Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Real time embedded systems are used in many applications

widely.
In this lecture you learn:

Introduction to RTS (Real Time Systems)

Definition
Example Car and Driver
Characteristics of RTS

Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Introduction
Any system where a timely response by the computer to
external input/condition is vital is a real-time system.
Timely: Meet the deadline.
Deadline: Hard and soft
Complete task: Accurately or estimate within deadline.
Hard Real-Time Systems: Aircraft,Nuclear Reactor
control.
Soft Real-time Systems: Multimedia,Internet access.
Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Automotive
DSPReal
Applications
Which
are the Hard/Soft
Time Systems ?
Navigation
Global Positioning
Digital Map
Adaptative cruise
Parking aid

Powertrain

Audio Processing
Digital Radio
Compact Disk
Graphic Equalizer
Sound Enhancement

Anti-Lock Brakes

Cellular Phone
Voice Dialing
Filtering

Voice Command

Electrical brakes (BBW) Speech Recognition

(E.G. lights, window)
Speaker Verification
for Secure Lock

Comfort/Security Equipment
Electrical seats
Window lifter
Airbag
Anti theft

Electronic Steering
Electrical power
Steering (EPS)
4-Wheel steering

Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Hydraulic or Air Pressure

Control
Dynamic Control

A Car and Driver Example

Driver is the real time controller

Car is the controlled process

Road is the operating environment
Mission is to reach the destination
Performance Measure:
1)Time to reach the destination under various road
conditions
2)Safety of the driver even if the destination is not
reached
Task deadlines are not constants ,varies with the
operating environment.
Writing formal specification and relating them is
Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan
difficult.

Issues in Real-time Computing

Research areas cover: Computer architecture, fault tolerant
computers, networks, embedded systems, standards, digital
communication, operating system clock synchronization,..
Example:
Task-Scheduling:For a normal system the goal is fairness to all
tasks. Round-robin scheduling.
For a RT system: Meet the deadlines for critical and high priority
tasks is the goal.
Task-Execution time should be predictable in RT system. For a
cache based RT system memory access time varies.

Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Structure of a Real-time System

Environment Controlled
process

Job
List

Sensors

Clock

Trigger
generator

Actuators

Execution

Display
Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Operator

Figure: A Schematic Diagram of a real-time system

Task classes
Periodic and aperiodic tasks
Aperiodic tasks with a bounded inter-arrival time are
called sporadic tasks
Critical and non-critical tasks.

Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

OPERATING SYSTEM ISSUES

Task assignment and scheduling
Communications protocols
Failure management and recovery
Clock synchronization algorithms

Other issues
Programming languages
Databases
Performance measure

Real Time System-- Subra Ganesan

Characteristics of RTS
Performance :
validation process includes
(1) Checking design correctness using formal and informal
methods,
(2) Characterizing performance
(3) Reliability
Choosing performance measure is crucial.
e.g : average time, peak time or variance.
Clock cycle may be misleading.
For soft RT, degraded response time is acceptable.
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Traditional Performance Measures

Reliability is the probability the system will not fail in an

interval
Availability is the fraction of time for which the system is up.
Throughput is the average number of instructions per unit time
the RTS can process.
Capacity Reliability(CR): Interval time when reliability is high.
Expected capacity survival time is the expected time for CR to
drop to specific value.
Mean computation before failure
Computational reliability
Computational availability
Per formability
Accomplishment levels
Cost functions for hard
deadlines:
Real Time
System-- SubraCost
GanesanVs Response times 11

Definition of Real Time System

There are many interpretation of a real time system; however, they
all consider the notion of response time the time take for the
system to generate output from some associated input.
Any information processing activity or system which has to
respond to externally generated input stimuli within a finite and
specified period.
A real-time system is a system that is required to react to stimuli
from the environment (including the passage of physical time)
within time intervals dictated by the environment.
The correctness of a real-time system depends not only on the
logical result of the computation, but also on the time at which the
results are produced.
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Definition of Real Time System

Hard real-time system and soft real-time
systems:
(1) Hard real-time systems are those where it is
absolutely imperative the response occur within
the specified deadline.
(2) Soft real-time systems are those where
response time are important but the system will
still function correctly if deadlines are
occasionally missed.
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Examples of Real-time System:

Process Control
Operator
console

Process control
Computer

Chemicals
and
materials

Valve

Temperature

Stirrer

transducer
Plant

A Process Control System

Finished
Product

Examples of Real-time Systems:

Manufacturing
Production control
computer

. . . .
Parts

Machine tools

Manipulators

Finished
Product

Conveyor belts

A Production
Control System
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Examples of real-time Systems:

Communication,command and control
Command Post

Command and
control computer

Temperature,pressure,power and so on
Terminals

Sensors/actuators

Real Time System-Ganesan System

A Command
andSubra
Control

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Examples of Real-time SystemsGeneralized Embedded Computer Systems

Real-time
clock

Algorithms for
digital control

Data logging

Database

Operators
console

Data retrieval
and display

Operator
interface
Real Time System-Subra Ganesan
Real-time
computer

Interface

Engineering
system

Remote
monitoring
system
Display
devices

A Typical
Embedded System
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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

A real-time system has many special characteristics (either inherent
or imposed). Clearly, not all real-time systems will exhibit the same
characteristics.
(1) Large and complex.
-Largeness of the system is related to variety which is caused
by the continuous changing requirements of the real world.
Traditional indicators, such as number of instructions and
development effort, are just symptoms of variety. Therefore, realtime systems undergo constant maintenance and enhancements
during their lifetimes. They must be extensible.
-Although real-time software is often complex, it cab be
broken down into smaller components which can be managed
effectively.

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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

(2) Manipulation of real numbers:
-Many real-time systems involve the control of some
engineering activity and most controllers are nowadays
implemented by computers.
-The implementation of control algorithms using
computers is often mathematically complex and require high
degree of a real time programming language, therefore, is the
ability to manipulate real, fixed- or floating-point numbers.

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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

(3) Extremely reliable and safe:
-The more society passes the control of its vital functions to
computers, the more important it becomes that those computers
do not fail.
*failure of a system involved in automatic fund transfer
between banks may cause the loss of millions of dollars.
*a faulty component in electricity generation could result in
the failure of the vital life-support system in a intensive care
unit.
-The large size and complexity of real-time systems make the
reliability become worse; not only must one expect difficulties
inherent in the application to be taken into account, but also
those introduced by faulty software or hardware design.
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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

(4) Concurrent control of separate system
components:
-In a typical embedded computer example, the
program has to interact with an engineering
system(which will consist of many parallel activities
such as robots, conveyor belts, sensors and so on) and
the computers display devices, the operators console,
the database and the real-time clock.
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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

-A major problem is how to express that concurrency
in the structure of the program.
Older real-time programming languages, for example
RTL/2,Coral 66 and C, relied on operating system
support for concurrency.
The more modern languages, such as Ada, Pearl and
Occam, have direct support for concurrent
programming.

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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

(5) Real-time facilities:
-Response time is crucial in any real-time
system.Unfortunately, it is very difficult to design and
implement systems which will guarantee that the
appropriate output will be generated at the appropriate
times under all possible conditions. For this, reason
real-time systems are usually constructed using
processors with considerable spare capacity.
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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

-Given adequate processing power, language and run-time
support, the programmer is to give:
#specify times at which actions are to be performed.
# specify times at which actions are to be completed.
#responses to situations where all or any of the timing
requirements cannot be met.
# responses to situations where all or any of the timing
requirements are changed dynamically.

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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

(6) Interaction with hardware interfaces:
-Most of the real-time systems requires the computer
components to interact with the external devices (e.g. sensors,
actuators). These devices interface to the computer via input
and output registers.Devices may also generate interrupts to
signal to the processor.
-The methods used in the past is:
~under the control of operating system, or
~the application programmer is required to resort to
assembly language control and manipulate the registers and
interrupts.
-The methods used nowadays are:
~the facilities provided by modern high level real-time
languages allows the control to be direct, and not through a
layer of operating system.
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Characteristics of Real-time Systems

(7) Efficient implementation and execution
environment:
-In real-time systems, what is actually important is the
meeting of deadlines of adequate response times in a
particular execution environment.
The term execution environment is used to mean
those components which are used together with the
applications code to make the complete system: the
processors, networks, operating system and so on.
Clearly, the more efficient use of the execution
environment, the more likely the requirements will be
met.
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End

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