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

13.3 Top-Down (Requirements-Driven) Performance Modeling

13.3.1 Specifying Targets – the Project-Management Analogy

When taking a top-down modeling approach, the problem facing us can be stated quite simply, as follows:

  • Design input: Specifications (in particular, performance objectives)
  • Design output: Functional architecture
  • Design performance: Who knows

Now, this is very similar to the issues faced when devising a project plan (Figure 13.7). The overall end-to-end project timescales are defined by the needs of the project. What must be done now is to produce a plan to ensure that the work gets finished on time. Such plans are developed first in their simplest form, concentrating on the major work phases. Each phase may then be further refined to show more detail. What we end up with is a model showing the work activities (and their relationships) of the project. Moreover, these activities have defined time allocations or targets. We can now functionally...