Introduction

to
Real Time Systems
Akos Ledeczi
EECE 354, Fall 2012
Vanderbilt University
Disclaimer
Some of the material/slides are adapted from
various presentations found on the internet:
Johnnie W. Baker
Ian Sommerville
Alan Burns and Andy Wellings
Others
And Prof. Kopetzs Real Time Systems book
Embedded vs. Real Time Systems
Embedded system: is a computer system that performs a
limited set of specific functions. It often interacts with its
environment.
RTS: Correctness of the system depends not only on the
logical results, but also on the time in which the results are
produced.
Embedded
Systems
Real Time
Systems
Examples?
Examples
Real Time Embedded:
Nuclear reactor control
Flight control
Basically any safety critical system
GPS
MP3 player
Mobile phone
Real Time, but not Embedded:
Stock trading system
Skype
Pandora
Embedded, but not Real Time:
Home temperature control
Sprinkler system
Washing machine, refrigerator, etc.
Blood pressure meter

Characteristics of RTS
Event-driven, reactive.
High cost of failure.
Concurrency/multiprogramming.
Stand-alone/continuous operation.
Reliability/fault-tolerance requirements.
Predictable behavior.

Time
digital clock
tick granule
now
instant instant
past future
duration
event event
time line
Definitions
Hard real-time systems where it is absolutely imperative that responses occur
within the required deadline. E.g. Flight control systems.
Soft real-time systems where deadlines are important but which will still
function correctly if deadlines are occasionally missed. E.g. Data acquisition
system.
Real real-time systems which are hard real-time and which the response times
are very short. E.g. Missile guidance system.
Firm real-time systems which are soft real-time but in which there is no benefit
from late delivery of service.
A single system may have all hard, soft and real real-time subsystems.
In reality many systems will have a cost function associated with missing each deadline
Control systems
Man-machine interface: input devices, e.g. keyboard and output devices,
e.g. display
Instrumentation interface: sensors and actuators that transform between
physical signals and digital data
Most control systems are hard real-time
Deadlines are determined by the controlled object, i.e. the temporal
behavior of the physical phenomenon
Operator
Controlled
Object
Real-Time
Computer
System
Man-Machine
Interface
Instrumentation
Interface
Control system example

Example: A simple one-sensor, one-actuator control system.
control-law
computation
A/D
A/D
D/A
sensor plant actuator
r
k

y
k

y(t) u(t)
u
k

reference
input r(t)
The system
being controlled
Outside effects
Control systems contd.
Pseudo-code for this system:
set timer to interrupt periodically with period T;
at each timer interrupt do
do analog-to-digital conversion to get y;
compute control output u;
output u and do digital-to-analog conversion;
end do
T is called the sampling period. T is a key design choice. Typical
range for T: seconds to milliseconds.
Reliability and Safety
Reliability: probability that the system will provide the specified service for
a given time period. (Also see Failure Rate or Mean Time To Failure: MTTF)
Safety: reliability regarding critical failure modes
Fail-safe system: if the system has a guaranteed safe state that can be
reached in case of a critical failure. It is a property of the controlled object
and not the computer system.
Watchdog: external device that gets periodic life sign from the computer
system. If it does not get it, it forces the controlled object into a safe state.
Fail-operational system: no such safe state exists, so the computer system
must provided (limited) functionality in case of failures to avoid a
catastrophic failure.
Alarm monitoring.
Primary event
Secondary alarms. Temporal order is very important. Alarm shower
Rare events
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Taxonomy of Real-Time Systems
13
Taxonomy of Real-Time Systems
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Taxonomy of Real-Time Systems
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Taxonomy: Static
Task arrival times can be predicted
Static (compile-time) analysis possible
Allows good resource usage (low idle time for
processors).

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Taxonomy: Dynamic
Arrival times unpredictable
Static (compile-time) analysis possible only for
simple cases.
Processor utilization decreases dramatically.
In many real systems, this is very difficult to
handle.
Must avoid over-simplifying assumptions
e.g., assuming that all tasks are independent,
when this is unlikely.
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Taxonomy: Soft Real-Time
Allows more slack in the implementation
Timings may be suboptimal without being
incorrect.
Problem formulation can be much more
complicated than hard real-time
Two common and an uncommon way of handling
non-trivial soft real-time system requirements
Set somewhat loose hard timing constraints
Informal design and testing
Formulate as an optimization problem
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Taxonomy: Hard Real-Time
Creates difficult problems.
Some timing constraints are inflexible
Simplifies problem formulation.
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Taxonomy: Periodic
Each task (or group of tasks) executes
repeatedly with a particular period.
Allows some static analysis techniques to be
used.
Matches characteristics of many real problems
It is possible to have tasks with deadlines
smaller, equal to, or greater than their period.
The later are difficult to handle (i.e., multiple
concurrent task instances occur).
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Periodic
Single rate:
One period in the system
Simple but inflexible
Used in implementing a lot of wireless sensor
networks.
Multi rate:
Multiple periods
Should be harmonics to simplify system design


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Taxonomy: Aperiodic
Are also called sporadic, asynchronous, or
reactive.
Creates a dynamic situation
Bounded arrival time interval are easier to
handle
Unbounded arrival time intervals are
impossible to handle with resource-
constrained systems.
Example: Adaptive Cruise Control
Demo video

Control system
Hard Real Time
Multi-rate periodic

Camera
GPS
Low-speed mode for
rush hour traffic
United States Patent 7096109
Data Acquisition and Signal-Processing
Systems

Examples:
Video capture.
Digital filtering.
Video and voice compression/decompression.
Radar signal processing.

Response times range from a few milliseconds to a few
seconds.
Typically simpler than control systems
Other Real-Time Applications
Real-time databases.
Examples: stock market, airline reservations, etc.
Transactions must complete by deadlines.
Main dilemma: Transaction scheduling algorithms and real-time
scheduling algorithms often have conflicting goals.
Data is subject temporal consistency requirements.

Multimedia.
Want to process audio and video frames at steady rates.
TV video rate is 30 frames/sec. HDTV is 60 frames/sec.
Telephone audio is 16 Kbits/sec. CD audio is 128 Kbits/sec.
Other requirements: Lip synchronization, low jitter, low end-to-end
response times (if interactive).
Are All Systems Real-Time Systems?
Question: Is a payroll processing system a real-time system?
It has a time constraint: Print the pay checks every two weeks.

Perhaps it is a real-time system in a definitional sense, but it
doesnt pay us to view it as such.

We are interested in systems for which it is not a priori
obvious how to meet timing constraints.
The Window of Scarcity
Resources may be categorized as:

Abundant: Virtually any system design methodology can be used to
realize the timing requirements of the application.

Insufficient: The application is ahead of the technology curve; no design
methodology can be used to realize the timing requirements of the
application.

Sufficient but scarce: It is possible to realize the timing requirements of
the application, but careful resource allocation is required.
Example: Interactive/Multimedia
Applications
sufficient
but scarce
resources
abundant
resources
insufficient
resources
Requirements
(performance, scale)
1980 1990 2000
Hardware resources in year X
Remote
Login
Network
File Access
High-quality
Audio
Interactive
Video
The interesting
real-time
applications
are here
OS or not?
Hardware
Operating
System
User Programs
Typical OS Configuration
Hardware
Including Operating
System Components
User Program
Typical Embedded Configuration
Foreground/Background Systems
Task-level, interrupt level
Critical operations must
be performed at the
interrupt level (not good)
Response time/timing
depends on the entire
loop
Code change affects
timing
Simple, low-cost systems
RTS Programming
Because of the need to respond to timing demands made by different stimuli/responses,
the system architecture must allow for fast switching between stimulus handlers.
Because of different priorities, unknown ordering and different timing requirements of
different stimuli, a simple sequential loop is not usually adequate.
Real-time systems are therefore usually designed as cooperating processes with a real-time
kernel controlling these processes.
Concurrent programming
Real Time Java?
Java supports lightweight concurrency (threads and
synchronized methods) and can be used for some soft
real-time systems.
Java is not suitable for hard RT programming but real-time
versions of Java are now available that address problems
such as
Not possible to specify thread execution time;
Uncontrollable garbage collection;
Not possible to access system hardware;
Etc.
Real-Time Specification for Java
Sun Java Real-Time System
Requires a Real Time OS underneath (e.g., no Windows support)


Classification of Scheduling Algorithms
All scheduling algorithms
static scheduling
(or offline, or clock driven)
dynamic scheduling
(or online, or priority driven)
static-priority
scheduling
dynamic-priority
scheduling
Scheduling strategies
Non pre-emptive scheduling
Once a process has been scheduled for execution, it runs to
completion or until it is blocked for some reason (e.g. waiting for I/O).
Pre-emptive scheduling
The execution of an executing processes may be stopped if a higher
priority process requires service.
Scheduling algorithms
Round-robin;
Rate monotonic;
Shortest deadline first;
Etc.
Real-time operating systems
Real-time operating systems are specialised operating systems
which manage the processes in the RTS.
Responsible for process management and
resource (processor and memory) allocation.
Do not normally include facilities such as file management.
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Operating system components
Real-time clock
Provides information for process scheduling.
Interrupt handler
Manages aperiodic requests for service.
Scheduler
Chooses the next process to be run.
Resource manager
Allocates memory and processor resources.
Dispatcher
Starts process execution.
Interrupt servicing
Control is transferred automatically to a
pre-determined memory location.
This location contains an instruction to jump to
an interrupt service routine.
Further interrupts are disabled, the interrupt
serviced and control returned to the interrupted
process.
Interrupt service routines MUST be short,
simple and fast.
Metrics for real-time systems differ from that for time-sharing systems.










schedulability is the ability of tasks to meet all hard deadlines
latency is the worst-case system response time to events
stability in overload means the system meets critical deadlines even if all
deadlines cannot be met

Whats Important in Real-Time
Time-Sharing
Systems
Real-Time
Systems
Capacity High throughput Schedulability

Responsiveness Fast average response Ensured worst-case
response
Overload Fairness Stability