Design of software for real-time system

This chapter reviews some of the issues relating to the development and design of real-time software and briefly outlines two design methodologies. With the increased use of microprocessors in equipment, there is a growing need for software engineers and other engineers to be familiar with techniques for developing real-time software. Implementors are moving away from reliance on monolithic, general-purpose operating systems and are using minimum operating system kernels. The additional operating system features required are then built using a high-level language for a particular application or group of applications. There is also an increasing use of multiprocessor systems with a consequent increased concern with communications, distributed databases and distributed operating systems.