ABSTRACT
An active object-based framework, such as the Quantum Framework (QF), sits at the focus of many conflicting forces that the framework must ultimately resolve in the applications’ interest. The stakes are high because the applications are so dependent on the framework that any wrong decision in its design or implementation could render the framework inadequate for whole classes of applications. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the embedded real-time1 domain. For example, many embedded systems are extremely cost sensitive, so the framework must be efficient in both memory and CPU utilization. Moreover, real-time systems are particularly intolerant to any form of nondeterminism because it can cause the systems to miss deadlines and fail.
