Hard Real-Time Computing Systems

Real-time computing plays a crucial role in our society since an increasing num­ ber of complex systems rely, in part or completely, on processor control. Ex­ amples of applications that require real-time computing include nuclear power plants, railway switching systems, automotive electronics, air traffic control, telecommunications, robotics, and military systems. In spite of this large application domain, most of the current real-time systems are still designed and implemented using low-level