Languages and Tools for Real-Time Systems: Problems, Solutions and Opportunities

Abstract

This report summarizes two talks I gave at the ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Language, Compiler, and Tool Support for Real-Time Systems, which took place on June 21, 1994, in in Orlando, Florida. The workshop was held in concert with ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Languages Design and Implementation. The first talk ("Statements about Real-Time: Truth or Bull?") was given in the early morning. At the behest of the workshop's organizers, its primary function was to seed the ongoing discourse and provoke some debate. Besides asking controversial questions, and positing opinions, the talk also identified some several fertile research areas that might interest PLDI attendees . The second talk ("Languages and Transformations: Some Solutions") was more technical, and it reviewed our research on program optimizations for real-time domains. However, I tried as much as possible to revisit the research problems raised in the morning talk, and present some possible approaches to them. The following paragraphs contain the text from my viewgraphs, laced with some commentary. Since so much work has been done in real-time systems - and even more in programming languages - my references are by necessity incomplete. (Also cross-referenced as UMIACS-TR-94-117)