Re: GNAT verses A# for soft-realtime system

["Jeffrey R. Carter" <jrcarter@acm.org>]

Chip and Allie Orange wrote:
> 
> My question was also, does .net have something about it that makes it a poor 
> environment for soft real-time systems?  Especially, does it produce code 
> that's noticeably slow, or that garbage collects in some way that would make 
> it less than desirable for real-time systems with very limited CPU 
> resources?

I have no experience with .net, so I cannot say. I understand that it 
includes garbage collection, so the usual caveats about using garbage 
collection in timing-critical SW would seem to apply.

> Do the additional features of 2005 target real-time systems?

Some do; some don't. In the former category, there are task-termination 
handlers, interfaces that must be implemented by tasks or protected 
objects, and timing events and handlers, among others.

> Finally, are the products from compiler vendors (Aionix and RR) that much 
> better than GNAT/GPL?

It depends on how you define "that much better". GNAT GPL is based on a 
mature Ada-95 compiler, but implements most of the new version. The 
commercial compilers are Ada-95 compilers. If you restrict yourself to 
unchanged Ada-95 features, then they're probably comparable. Otherwise, 
you're comparing apples to pears. GNAT GPL has a number of known errors 
in the new features; the commercial compilers don't have the new 
features. You have to work around the errors in GNAT GPL; you're 
unlikely to encounter that with a supported compiler.

-- 
Jeff Carter
"Go and boil your bottoms."
Monty Python & the Holy Grail
01