Why real-time computing?
Giorgio Buttazzo · CINECA IRIS Institutional Research Information System (Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies) · 2006
82 - Automazione e Strumentazione - Febbraio 2007 Most of today’s control systems are implemented in software and often require the concurrent execution of several periodic and aperiodic activities interacting through a set of shared resources (typically consisting of memory buffers storing global data). In a modular design, each sensory acquisition activity is normally associated with a periodic task that gets data from the sensory board and puts them into a shared memory buffer. Control activities are also implemented as periodic tasks that read data from buffers, compute the output values of the control variables and put the results in other buffers, used by device drivers to actually drive the actuators. In some cases, especially when the system is based on a hierarchial architecture, control and acquisition activities are required to run at different rates.