Off-line analysis techniques for hard real-time systems are all based on the assumption that we can estimate the worst-case
execution time of the different tasks executing in the system. In the traditional cyclic-executive schedulers, execution time
limits were enforced for each task by the scheduler. Unfortunately, in concurrent hard real-time systems such as those using
the tasking model defined in Ada, no bound on the execution time of tasks is enforced, which may result in a system timing
malfunction not detected by the analysis techniques. In this paper we explore the implementation of execution time clocks
within the task scheduler, and we describe methods to detect execution time overruns in the application, and to limit their
effects. We also discuss the use of execution time clocks to enhance the performance of sporadic server schedulers implemented
at the application level.
Keywords Scheduling - Hard Real-Time - Ada 95 - Execution Time - Sporadic Server
This work has been funded in part by the Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología of the Spanish Government under grant number TAP97-892