Re: Tips for realtime embedded Ada?

[griest-tom@cs.yale.edu (Tom Griest)]

John Gluth <jpGluth@ccgate.hac.com> writes:

>I'm looking for wisdom regarding designing software for a realtime
>embedded application.
>
>Can you suggest constructs, design philosophies, etc. to use/avoid
>to avoid inefficient code?

If you have the flexibility to use Ada95, take a look at the real-time 
annex.  In genneral, you want to avoid a design that results in very
large numbers of simultaneous tasks unless you have parallel hardware
which takes advantage of the parallelism.

The Keep It Simple philosophy is usually best for real-time.  Add
complexity only when it buys you a big win in requirements relief.
For example, you might add timestamping and extrapolation if it
relaxes the requirement on sampling period stability and therefore
becomes more tolerant of interrupt jitter.

A netnews article is not the best place to go into all the details,
and that's why there are several books on this subject.  I can
recommend books by either Andy Wellings or Alan Burns, but I'm sure
there are many other good books out there too.

-Tom