UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS
AMHERST, MASSACHUSETTS, 01003
Real-time computing is a critical enabling technology and fundamental results in this area can benefit many other research areas and applications.
Real-time computing is pervasive at the application level and entwined in the fabric of all other Computer Science areas, including: architecture, networking and multimedia, operating systems, scheduling, programming languages, databases, formal methods, specifications, tools, software engineering, fault tolerance, safety critcal systems, security, artificial intelligence, and applications. The concepts and fundamental principles of real-time computing should be taught at the Univerity and used as an integral part of each of these Computer Science areas.
Almost all future computer systems will be real-time systems! Why will most future computer systems be intimately tied to real-time computing? This will be largely due to the confluence of communications, computers and databases fueled by distributed multimedia. Of course, many classical real-time systems such as manufacturing and process control will continue to proliferate. We will also see an ever expanding scope of classical real-time systems into domains such as Intelligent Highway Vehicle Systems. At the heart of all these future systems will be real-time principles -- an enabling technology. We need to enhance research efforts on this enabling technology to speed solutions for these applications. Efforts will also be required to tailor fundamental results to solutions required for each of the various application areas. Most importantly, more courses and training of individuals in these principles are required.
Many research areas must be pursued in real-time computing, but some of the more important and recent ones include:
* software engineering for embedded and real-time systems
* real-time databases and its interaction with control and sensor data on the one end and archival data on the other end
* the emergence of new real-time constraints and guarantee requirements for multimedia
* the integration of fault tolerance and real-time requirements in large and dynamic systems.
Several years ago I wrote (with the endorsement of other researchers listed on the paper) a five page paper entitled Real-Time Computing: A Critical Enabling Technology explaining the need for increased research in real-time computing and extolling the value of real-time computing as an enabling technology. See this paper for more information.