HARD RTS

1. In a hard or immediate real-time system, the completion of an operation after its deadline is considered useless - ultimately, this may lead to a critical failure of the complete system. 2. Hard real-time systems are typically found interacting at a low level with physical hardware, in embedded systems.

SOFT RTS
1. A soft real-time system on the other hand will tolerate such lateness, and may respond with decreased service quality.

2. Soft real-time systems are typically those used where there is some issue of concurrent access and the need to keep a number of connected systems up to date with changing situations. 3. These can operate to a latency of seconds. 4. The usefulness of a result degrades after its deadline, thereby degrading the system's quality of service. 5. The goal becomes meeting a certain subset of deadlines in order to optimize some application specific criteria. 6. The preemption period for the soft real time task in worst case may be about a few ms. Example: the software that maintains and updates the flight plans for commercial airliners, Live audio-video systems

3. Hard real-time systems are used when it is imperative that an event is reacted to within a strict deadline. 4. Missing a deadline is a total system failure. 5. The goal of a hard real-time system is to ensure that all deadlines are met. 6. The preemption period for the hard real time task in worst case should be less than a few micro sec. Example: a car engine control system, medical systems such as heart pacemakers and industrial process controllers.

REAL TIME SYSTEM

A system is said to be real-time if the total correctness of an operation depends not only upon its logical correctness, but also upon the time in which it is performed. Real-time systems, as well as their deadlines, are classified by the consequence of missing a deadline.

HARD RTS
Hard real time means strict about adherence to each task deadline. Missing a deadline is a total system failure. The goal of a hard real-time system is to ensure that all deadlines are met When an event occurs, it should be serviced within the predictable time at all times in a given hard real time system. The preemption period for the hard real time task in worst case should be less than a Few micro sec. A hard RT RTOS is one, which has predictable performance with no deadline miss, even in case of sporadic tasks (sudden bursts of occurrence of events requiring attention). Hard real-time systems are used when it is imperative that an event be reacted to within a strict deadline. Such strong guarantees are required of systems for which not reacting in a certain interval of time would cause great loss in some manner, especially damaging the surroundings physically or threatening human lives (although the strict definition is simply that missing the deadline constitutes failure of the system). Hard real-time systems are typically found interacting at a low level with physical hardware, in embedded systems. Early video game systems such as the Atari 2600 and Cinematronics vector graphics had hard real-time requirements because of the nature of the graphics and timing hardware. For example, a car engine control system is a hard real-time system because a delayed signal may cause engine failure or damage. Other examples of hard real-time embedded systems include medical systems such as heart pacemakers and industrial process controllers. EXAMPLE: Automobile engine control system and anti lock brake are the examples of hard real time systems. Other examples are video transmission, each picture frame and audio must be transferred at fixed rate.

SYSTEM DESIGN 1. Disabling of all other interrupts of lower priority when running the hard real time tasks 2. Preemption of higher priority task by lower priority tasks 3. Some critical code in assembly to meet the real time constraint (deadline) fast 4. Task running in kernel space, [This saves the time required to first check whether access is outside the memory space allocated to the kernel functions.] 5. Provision of asynchronous IOs 6. Provision of locks or spin locks 7. Predictions of interrupt latencies and context switching latencies of the tasks 8. Predictability is achieved by writing all functions which execute always take the same predefined time intervals in case of varying rates of occurrences of the events.

9. Response in all the time slots for the given events in the system and thus providing the guaranteed task deadlines even in case of sporadic and aperiodic tasks. 10. Sporadic tasks means tasks executed on the sudden-bursts of the corresponding events at high rates, and 11. Aperiodic tasks mean task having no definite period of event occurrence.

SOFT RTS
One in which deadlines are mostly met. The usefulness of a result degrades after its deadline, thereby degrading the system's quality of service. The goal becomes meeting a certain subset of deadlines in order to optimize some application specific criteria. The particular criteria optimized depends on the application, but some typical examples include maximizing the number of deadlines met, minimizing the lateness of tasks and maximizing the number of high priority tasks meeting their deadlines. Soft real-time systems are typically used where there is some issue of concurrent access and the need to keep a number of connected systems up to date with changing situations. The preemption period for the soft real time task in worst case may be about a few ms. Soft real time means that only the precedence and sequence for the taskoperations are defined, interrupt latencies and context switching latencies are small but there can be few deviations between expected latencies of the tasks and observed time constraints and a few deadline misses are accepted For example software that maintains and updates the flight plans for commercial airliners. The flight plans must be kept reasonably current but can operate to a latency of seconds. Live audio-video systems are also usually soft real-time; violation of constraints results in degraded quality, but the system can continue to operate EXAMPLE: Mobile phone, digital cameras and orchestra playing robots are examples of soft real time systems.

NOTE: Soft real time systems can accept few deadline misses and Hard real time systems adhere to the predicted latencies, deadlines and time constraints of the process.

Digital Control
Digital control is a branch of control theory that uses digital computers to act as system controllers. Depending on the requirements, a digital control system can take the form of amicrocontroller to

an ASIC to a standard desktop computer. Since a digital computer is a discrete system, the Laplace transform is replaced with the Z-transform. Also since a digital computer has finite precision (See quantization), extra care is needed to ensure the error in coefficients, A/D conversion, D/A conversion, etc. are not producing undesired or unplanned effects. The application of digital control can readily be understood in the use of feedback. Since the creation of the first digital computer in the early 1940s the price of digital computers has dropped considerably, which has made them key pieces to control systems for several reasons: Inexpensive: under $5 for many microcontrollers Flexibile: easy to configure and reconfigure through software

Scalable: programs can scale to the limits of the memory or storage space without extra cost Adaptable: parameters of the program can change with time (See adaptive control) Static operation: digital computers are much less prone to environmental conditions than capacitors, inductors, etc.

Digital Controller Implementation

A digital controller is usually cascaded with the plant in a feedback system. The rest of the system can either be digital or analog. Typically, a digital controller requires: A/D conversion to convert analog inputs to machine readable (digital) format D/A conversion to convert digital outputs to a form that can be input to a plant (analog) A program that relates the outputs to the inputs

Output Program
Outputs from the digital controller are functions of current and past input samples, as well as past output samples - this can be implemented by storing relevant values of input and output in registers. The output can then be formed by a weighted sum of these stored values. The programs can take numerous forms and perform many functions A digital filter for low-pass filtering A state space model of a system to act as a state observer A telemetry system

Digital Signal Processing

In a real-time DSP process, the analyzed (input) and generated (output) samples can be processed (or generated) continuously in the time it takes to input and output the same set of samples independent of the processing delay.[3] It means that the processing delay must be bounded even if the processing continues for an unlimited time. That means that the average processing time per sample is no greater than the sampling period, which is the reciprocal of the sampling rate. This is the criterion whether the samples are grouped together in large segments and processed in blocks or are processed individually and whether there are long, short, or nonexistent input and output buffers. Consider an audio DSP example: if a process requires 2.01 seconds to analyze, synthesize, or process 2.00 seconds of sound, it is not real-time. If it takes 1.99 seconds, it is or can be made into, a real-time DSP process. A common life analog is standing in a line or queue waiting for the checkout in a grocery store. If the line asymptotically grows longer and longer without bound, the checkout process is not realtime. If the length of the line is bounded, customers are being "processed" and outputted as rapidly, on average, as they are being inputted and that process is real-time. The grocer might go out of business or must at least lose business if he/she cannot make his/her checkout process real-time (so it's fundamentally important that this process be real-time). A signal processing algorithm that cannot keep up with the flow of input data with output falling farther and farther behind the input is not real-time. But if the delay of the output (relative to the input) is bounded during a process that operates over an unlimited time, then that signal processing algorithm is real-time, even if the throughput delay may be very long.

REAL TIME APPLICATION A real-time application (RTA) is an application program that functions within a time frame that the user senses as immediate or current. The latency must be less than a defined value, usually measured in seconds. Whether or not a given application qualifies as an RTA depends on the worst-case execution time (WCET), the maximum length of time a defined task or set of tasks requires on a given hardware platform. The use of RTAs is called real-time computing (RTC). Examples of RTAs include:

Videoconference applications VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) Online gaming Community storage solutions Some e-commerce transactions Chatting IM (instant messaging)