A development method for real-time software in a parallel environment
Anhtuan Q. Dinh · 1995
Most design approaches that have been proposed for real-time software have been implemented in single-processor environments where the efficiency of systems decreases when the number of concurrent threads increases significantly. While several parallel programming languages have been developed with powerful features and constructs for concurrent systems, it is recognized that there has been no development method for constructing large-scale real-time software using these languages. This research proposes a development method for real-time software in a parallel environment. The research is based on Entity-Life Modeling (ELM) for dealing with entities and objects in a problem environment. The method includes two major phases in the software lifecycle: requirements and design. While the first phase is language-independent, the second phase maps requirements into a design using the actor-based ACT++ language. The research provides a method to map entities, concurrent behaviors within entities, and objects identified in a problem environment onto active actors, behaviors, and passive objects in ACT++, respectively, with the consideration of inheritance, mutual exclusion, and deadlock prevention. The contribution of this research is two-fold. First, it extends the principle of the ELM design approach to a parallel environment with multiple processors. Second, it demonstrates a method to exploit most features and constructs of the parallel actor-based ACT++ language for the construction of large-scale real-time software systems. A Flexible Manufacturing System is used as the proof-of-concept prototype for this research.