Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By : Jim Cooling
Book Image

The Complete Edition - Software Engineering for Real-Time Systems

By: Jim Cooling

Overview of this book

From air traffic control systems to network multimedia systems, real-time systems are everywhere. The correctness of the real-time system depends on the physical instant and the logical results of the computations. This book provides an elaborate introduction to software engineering for real-time systems, including a range of activities and methods required to produce a great real-time system. The book kicks off by describing real-time systems, their applications, and their impact on software design. You will learn the concepts of software and program design, as well as the different types of programming, software errors, and software life cycles, and how a multitasking structure benefits a system design. Moving ahead, you will learn why diagrams and diagramming plays a critical role in the software development process. You will practice documenting code-related work using Unified Modeling Language (UML), and analyze and test source code in both host and target systems to understand why performance is a key design-driver in applications. Next, you will develop a design strategy to overcome critical and fault-tolerant systems, and learn the importance of documentation in system design. By the end of this book, you will have sound knowledge and skills for developing real-time embedded systems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Preface
15
Glossary of terms

13. Performance Engineering

Many projects have come to grief because the software couldn't cope with the demands of the real world. Problems have occurred in all sectors of industry, including aerospace, auto, medical, financial services, and online booking systems. One point can be singled out as being dominant: the failure to deal with software performance requirements right from the start of projects.

The objectives of this chapter are to show:

  • Why it is important to design for performance in real-time systems
  • Where performance requirements come from
  • How software performance relates to system performance
  • How performance targets get translated into performance achievables and deliverables
  • Why modeling and simulation are key techniques in performance analysis, prediction, and evaluation
  • How doing top-down, bottom-up, and middle-out performance analysis can reduce risk

The core philosophy of this chapter is that software should be constructed...