Re: Ada and Automotive Industry

["Marin David Condic, 561.796.8997, M/S 731-93" <condicma@PWFL.COM>]

Robert Dewar <dewar@MERV.CS.NYU.EDU> writes:
>Ken Tindall says
>....
>It is impossible. Ada 83 tasking cannot be used reliably for real-time
>(as the Boeing people above mentioned). Ada 95 tasking still leaves a big
>efficiency problem, which is crucial to the automotive industry,
>where a few cents on a control unit add up to millions over a product
>life.
>
>  Again, unsubstantiated general claims. It must almost certainly be
>  the case that the writer does NOT know Ada very well. If I am wrong
>  on this, then Ken, make some specific technical points that we can
>  address instead of unsubstantiated generalities.
>
    The "It is impossible" part bothers me. I've got stuff flying
    around in the sky as we speak which is utilizing Ada83 tasking in
    realtime. I'm launching stuff into outer space which is utilizing
    Ada83 tasking in realtime. I've got tasks driving 5, 10 and 20
    millisecond control loops (on an ancient, 1750a processor running
    astronomically slow, to boot!) and they're working fine and not
    absorbing any significant overhead above and beyond what it would
    cost to implement similar loops with some sort of primitive
    foreground/background processing scheme cobbled out of C.

    If the claim is "It is impossible", then clearly, not enough
    effort has been expended to prove it otherwise.

    MDC

Marin David Condic, Senior Computer Engineer    ATT:        561.796.8997
M/S 731-96                                      Technet:    796.8997
Pratt & Whitney, GESP                           Fax:        561.796.4669
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