Module 1

Introduction to Real-Time Systems

 Historical background
• Brown and Campbell – 1950 – Earliest proposal –
• Computer operating in real time
• Consists of feedback and feed-forward loops
• Assumption was that, the analog computers can be used
• Digital computer elements were not excluded
• First digital computer – developed for real time control
– For airborne operation
• Digitrac digital computer – 1954 – used to provide an
automatic flight and weapons control system
Historical background
 Historical background
• Digital computers usage –in Industrial control- late 1950s
• Computer and electronic system manufacturers – for
extending markets – been out from military uses of – initiated the
computer control in industries
• 1958, September – Louisiana Power and Light Company -
Daystrom computer system’s installation – for plant monitoring
– in their power station – at Sterling,Louisiana
• It was not the control system
• First industrial computer installation -Texaco Company –Ramo-
Wooldridge Company - RW-300 system’s installation -at Port
Arthur refinery in Texas
• 1959, March 15th – Refinery was run under closed loop control
 Historical background
• 1957-58 - Monsanto Chemical Company – with the
cooperation of Ramo-Wooldridge Company – studied
the control by computer 
• 1958, October – Planned to have computer control for
ammonia plant – at Luling, Louisiana
• 1960, Jan 20th – Began the Commissioning of computer
control for ammonia plant at Luling, Louisiana
• 1960, April 4th – Closed loop control was achieved – after
rewriting – the control of the program
• Noise problems – were faced – on the measurement of signals
 Historical background
• 1959-60, B. F. Goodrich Company – Acrylanite plant, at
Calvert city, Kentucky – had the same installation scheme – as
above – and also –40 systems of RW-300 based – were in for
supervisory control systems – used for steady-state
optimization calculations – to determine the set-points – for
standard analog controllers
• Here, computer – not controlling directly – movement of the
valves or other plant actuators
 Historical background
• 1962, November – Ferranti Argus 200 systems - First DDC
(Direct Digital Control) system – installed – at ICI ammonia-
soda plant at Fleetwood, Lancashire, UK
• 1959 – Planning for the above had begun (Burkitt,1965)
• It was the large system – 120 control loops (94 of were used
actually) – 256 measurements (224 of were used actually) – in
Fleetwood system
• 1961 – Monsanto Company – began DDC projects –  Texas
city plant – and, a hierarchical control scheme for
petrochemical companies, at Chocolate Bayou
 Historical background
• RW-300 computer – used the rotating drum store – to hold the
control program
• Ferranti Argus 200 – Used the ferrite core store – to hold the control
program
• PROM – program was held in it
• Loaded by – physically inserting pegs into a plug board – each peg
representing – one bit in the memory word
• Laborious to set up initially
• Very reliable –since, destruction of the memory contents - can
be done only by physical dislodgement of the pegs
• Security was enhanced – using special power supplies – and, switch-
over mechanisms – to protect information held in the main core store
 Historical background
The information – was as follows
1. Set points – Loss most undesirable
2. Valve demand – Presence after controlled stoppage allows
computer to gain control of plant immediately and without
disturbing the plant
3. Memory calculations – Loss is tolerable, soon will be updated
and only slight disturbance to plant
4. Future development – Extension to allow for optimization may
require information to be maintained for long periods of time
More rapid memory access – were in Ferranti Argus 200 –
compared to that of RW-300 and similar machines
 Historical background
• 1960s, Early – Computers ware using – combined magnetic core
memories and drum stores – drum eventually giving way to hard disk
drives
• Ex.: for early 1960s computers – 
• General Electric 4000 series
• IBM 1800
• CDC 1700
• Foxboro FOX 1, and Foxboro 1A
• SDS
• Xerox SIGMA series
• Ferranti Argus series
• Elliot Automation 900 series
 Historical background
• In attempts to resolve some problems of the early machines -
Cost of systems increased –
• Increase was such that frequently their use could be justified
with only one computer – for both supervising control and DDC
–– This led to further problems in development of software's
• Softwares – written by specialists programmers – in machine
code – was manageable earlier – since, tasks were defined
clearly and the programs’ length were less
• Combining of DDC and supervisory control increased
1. The code length, for a given application
2. The complexity of the programming
 Historical background
• DDC and supervisory control – were with very different time-
scales
• DDC control programs – have to interrupt the supervisory
control programs
• Increase in code length – made all the code could not be stored
in core memory and also swapping of code between the drum
memory and core
• Solutions to increased code length problems above – were by -
Development of general purpose real-time operating systems
and high-level languages
 Historical background
• Late 1960s – RTOS were developed
• Various PROCESS FORTRAN compilers made
their appearance
• Problems and costs of involving in having one computer only
for use made the users to retreat the smaller systems for which
newly developing microcomputers (like DEC PDP-8, PDP-11,
Data General Nova, Honeywell 316,etc.,) were ideally suited
• Minicomputers -less cost – made them suitable – to load the
large number of tasks onto one machine
 Elements of a Computer Control
System
• Centrifugal fan blows air over a heating element & into a tube
• Thermistor bead is placed at the outlet end of the tube & forms
one arm of a bridge circuit
• Amplified output is available at B
– Provides a voltage in the range 0 to 10V proportional to
temperature
• Current supplied to the heating element can be varied by
supplying a dc voltage in the range 0 to 10Volts to point A
• Position of the air inlet cover to the fan is adjusted by means
of a reversible motor
 Elements of a Computer Control
System
• Motor operates at a constant speed
• Turned on and turned off by a logical signal applied to its
controller
• A second logic signal determines the direction of rotation
• Potentiometer wiper is attached to the air inlet cover
• Voltage output is proportional to the position of the cover
• Microswitches are used to detect when the cover is fully open
and fully closed
• Operator is provided with a panel from which the control
system can be switched from automatic to manual control
 REAL-TIME SYSTEM DEFINITION

The oxford Dictionary of computing offers the definition:

• Any system in which the time at which the output is produced
is significant. This usually because the input corresponded to
some movement in the physical world, and output has to relate
to that same movement. The lag from input time to output time
must be sufficiently small for acceptable timeliness.
Latter type of system cooling (1991) offers the definition:
• Real- time systems are those which must produce correct
responses within a definite time limit
 REAL-TIME SYSTEM DEFINITION

An alternative definition is:

• A real- time system read inputs from the plant and sends
control signals to the plant at times determined by plant
operational considerations.
Real –time program is defined as:
• A program for which the correctness of operation depends
both on the logical results of the computation and the time at
which the results are produced
EXCEPTION HANDLING
ERROR CHECKING
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• Need to manipulate data directly in specific registers

in computer system
• Eg. In memory registers, CPU registers and registers
in an input/output device
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• For computer systems in which input/output devices are not

memory mapped, eg. Z80 systems additional systems are
provided as
INP(address)
OUT(address,value)
• Different approach has been adopted in BBC Basic
• Uses indirection operator ---- ?
100 DACAddress = &FE60
120 ?DACAddress = &34
• This results in hexadecimal number 34 to be loaded into
location FE60
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• In some process FORTRAN languages and in CORAL and

RTL/2 additional features which allow manipulation of the bits
in an integer variable are provided

• Operations such as AND,OR,SRA and SRL, etc are available

which mimic operations at assembly level
• Weakness on implementing low level facilities:
• Type checking is lost
• Easy to make mistakes
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• Much more secure method is to allow the programmer to

declare the address of the register or memory location and to
be able to associate a type with the declaration
• VAR charout AT 0FE60H : CHAR;
• Declares a variable of type CHAR located at memory location
0FE60H
• Characters can be written to this location by simple
assignment
• charout := 45;
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• Modula 2 provides a low-level support mechanism through a

simple set of primitives which have to be encapsulated in a
small nucleus coded in the assembly language of a computer
on which the system is to run
• Access to the primitives is through a module SYSTEM which
is known to the compiler
• SYSTEM can be thought of as the software bus linking the
nucleus to the rest of the software module
• SYSTEM makes available 3 data types:
• WORD, ADDRESS, PROCESS
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• SYSTEM makes available 3 data types:

WORD, ADDRESS, PROCESS
• SYSTEM makes available 6 procedures:
ADR, SIZE, TSIZE, NEWPROCESS, TRANSFER,
IOTRANSFER
• WORD
• Datatype which specifies a variable which maps onto one unit
of the specific computer storage
• ADDRESS
• Corresponds to the definition
• TYPE ADDRESS = POINTER TO WORD
 LOW LEVEL FACILITIES

• PROCESS
• Objects of type PROCESS have associated with them storage for
the volatile environment of the particular computer on which
Modula 2 is implemented
• Three of the procedures are for address manipulation
1. ADR (v) – returns the ADDRESS of variable v
2. SIZE (v) – returns the size of variable v in words
3. TSIZE (t) - returns the size of any variable of type t in words
• A combination of low level access facilities and the module
concept allows the details of the hardware device to be hidden
within the module with only the procedures for accessing the
module made available to the end user