In: SIGSOFT Softw. Eng. Notes, Volume 32, 2, pages 1-10. 2007.
Abstract: Hard real-time embedded systems have stringent timing constraints that must be met in order to ensure the correct functioning of the system. In many cases, these systems are composed of several CPU-bound tasks, which may need to rely on multiple processors, since just a single processor may not allow meeting all timing constraints. In order to deal with stringent constraints, specialized operating system kernels are often adopted in real-time embedded systems. However, the operating system usage may introduce significant overheads in execution time as well as in memory requirement. Software synthesis is an alternative approach to operating systems usage, since it can generate tailored code that satisfy: (i) functional, performance, and resource constraints; and (ii) other features such as scheduling, resource management, communication and synchronization. In this paper, a software synthesis approach based on a formalism, namely, time Petri nets, is presented in order to generate predictable scheduled code for hard real-time embedded systems with multiple processors.