ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades or more, a considerable volume of literature has been produced that addresses the issues and challenges of scheduling real-time systems. The focus of much of this research has been on how to effectively support a collection of distinct applications, each with a mixture of periodic and nonperiodic, and hard and soft, activities. This work is seen as an enabling technology for a wide range of applications from multimedia to robust control. Notwithstanding the quality of individual contributions, it is unfortunately true that system implementors have not, in general, taken up these results. There are a
CRC-C6781 CH013.tex 5/6/2007 14: 23 Page 2
number of reasons for this, including the normal inertia associated with technical change, but we would highlight the following [18]:
• Inconsistency in the literature-no single approach has emerged as being widely applicable, indeed there is not even any consensus over the right simulation models to use for evaluation.
