REAL TIME SYSTEMS

UNIT 1: INTRODUCTION TO REAL-TIME SYSTEMS: Historical background, RTS Definition, Classification of Real-time Systems, Time constraints, Classification of Programs. 6 Hours

Historical background
Brown and Campbell 1950 Earliest proposal - Computer operating in real time (as a part of the control system) Consists of feedback and feed-forward loops Assumption was that, the analog computers can be used Digital computer elements did not were excluded First digital computer developed for real time control for airborne operation Digitrac digital computer 1954 used to provide an automatic flight and weapons control system Industrial control in digital computers usage late 1950s Computer and electronic system manufacturers for extending markets been out from military uses of initiated the computer control industries 1958, September Louisiana Power and Light Company - Daystrom computer systems installation for plant monitoring in their power station at Sterling, Louisiana It was not the control system First industrial computer installation Texaco Company Ramo-Wooldridge Company - RW-300 systems installation at Port Arthur refinery in Texas 1959, March 15th Refinery were using closed loop control system (Anon, 1959)

1957-58 - Monsanto Chemical Company with the cooperation of RamoWooldridge Company studied the control by computer

1958, October it planned to have computer control for ammonia plant at Luling, Louisiana

1960, July 20th Commissioning of computer control for ammonia plant at Luling, Louisiana began

1960, April 4th Closed loop control was achieved after rewriting the control of the program - Noise problems were faced on the measurement of signals

1959-60, B. F. Goodrich Company Acrylanite plant, at Calvert city, Kentucky had the same installation scheme as above and also 40 systems of RW-300 based were in for supervisory control systems for using for steady-state optimization calculations for determining the set-points for standard analog controllers Here, computer not controlling directly movement of the valves or other plant actuators

1959 Plan to had the following installation were begun (Burkitt,1965) 1962, November Ferranti Argus 200 systems - First DDC (Direct Digital Control) system installed at ICI ammonia-soda plant at Fleetwood, Lancashire, UK It was the large system 120 control loops (94 of were used actually) 256 measurements (224 of were used actually) in Fleetwood system

1961 Monsanto Company Texas city plant and, a hierarchical control scheme for petrochemical companies, at Chocolate Bayou DDC projects began

RW-300 computer used the rotating drum store to hold the control program

Ferranti Argus 200 Used the ferrite core store to hold the control program PROM program was held in it Loaded by physically inserting pegs into a plug board each peg representing one bit in the memory word Was laborious to set up initially Was very reliable since, destruction of the memory contents - can be done only by physical dislodgement of the pegs Security was enhanced using special power supplies and, switch-over mechanisms to protect information held in the main core store The information was as follows 1. Set points Loss most undesirable 2. Valve demand Presence after controlled stoppage allows computer to gain control of plant immediately and without disturbing the plant (referred to as bumpless transfer) 3. Memory calculations Loss is tolerable, soon will be updated and only slight disturbance to plant 4. Future development Extension to allow for optimization may require information to be maintained for long periods of time 5. More rapid memory access were in Ferranti Argus 200 that of RW-300 and similar machines Began the second phase of application of computers to real time control

1960s, Early Computers ware using combined magnetic core memories and drum stores drum eventually giving way to hard disk drives

Ex.: for early 1960s computers General Electric 4000 series BM 1800 CDC 1700 Foxboro FOX 1, and Foxboro 1A SDS Xerox SIGMA series

Ferranti Argus series Elliot Automation 900 series

Cost of earlier computer increased in attempts to resolve some problems and only one computer for supervising control and DDC can be justified only it was with further problems in development of softwares

Softwares written by specialists programmers in machine code it was manageable earlier since, tasks were defined clearly and the programs length were less

Combining of DDC and supervisory control increased 1. the code length, for a given application 2. the complexity of the programming DDC and supervisory control were with very different time-scales DDC control programs have to interrupt the supervisory control programs increase in code length made all the code could be stored in core memory and also swapping of code between the drum memory and core to be to done were also - Solutions to increased code length problems above were by Development of general purpose real-time operating systems and high-level languages

Late 1960s RTOS were developed PROCESS FORTRAN compilers had their appearance

Problems and costs of involving in having one computer only for use made the users to retreat the smaller systems for which newly developing microcomputers (like DEC PDP-8, PDP-11, Data General Nova, Honeywell 316, etc.,) were ideally suited

Microcomputers less cost made them suitable to load the large number of tasks onto one machine, (by using more than one microcomputer, instead a single computer)

1970 two computers on the systems were using in which one computer acting simply stand-by to function in the event of failure of the working computer

Throughout 1970 Developments in ICs and construction techniques in circuit boards led to - increment in reliability of the systems reduction in the cost increment in the processor power increase in the fast memory amount made more correct and dependable softwares to be to write

1974 microprocessors advent made it economical to use distributed computer control system

RTS Definition
RTS definition (in as The Oxford dictionary of Computing): Any system in which the time at which the output is produced is significant. This is usually because the input corresponds to some movement in the physical world, and the output has to relate to that same movement. The lag from input time to output time must be sufficiently small for acceptable timelines RTS definition (Cooling 1991): Real-time systems are those which must produce correct responses within a definite time limit. Should computer responses exceed these time bounds then performance degradation and/or malfunction results RTS definition (alternate definition):

A real-time system reads inputs from the plant and sends control signals to the plant at times determined by plant operational considerations not at times limited by the capabilities of the computer system

RTS definition: A program for which the correctness of operations depends both on the logical results of the computations and the time at which the results are produced Ex.: Aircraft engine control system sending response to UNIX workstations

Classification of Real-time Systems

Computer is connected to the environment within which it is working by a wide range of interface devices and receives an sends a variety of stimuli in the real time systems and embedded computers Ex.: Plant input, plant output, and communication tasks shown in Fig.

They have one common feature that they are connected by physical devices to processes which are external to the computer. These external processes all operate in their own time scales and the computer is said to operated I real time if actions carried out in the computer relate to the time scales of the external processes Synchronization between the external processes and the internal actions (tasks) carried by the computer: 1. Clock based: Synchronization between the above two - if in depends on passages of time, actual time of day (clock based RTS) 2. Event based: Synchronization between the above two if in depends events Ex.: Closure of a switch 3. Interactive Systems: Relation between the actions in the computer and the system is much more loosely defined Requirement, typically in the form that a set of operations in the computer should be completed within a predetermined time Majority of the communication tasks are of this category Control tasks: Even though not obviously and directly connected to the external environment they need to operated in real time since, time is usually involved in determining the parameters of the algorithms used. It is useful to divide tasks to be carried out by embedded computers into the interactive categories and characteristics of each class are to be recognized Types of tasks in real time systems: The three types of tasks are

1. Clock-based (Cyclic, Periodic) 2. Event-based (Aperiodic) 3. Interactive systems 1. Clock-based Tasks (Cyclic, Periodic) Process of the plant - operate in real time Plant time constant: its the measure of the time taken by a plant to respond to a change in input or load and is used as a characteristic of the plant May be measured in hours for some chemical processes or In ms for an aircraft system Feedback control: It involves the feedback control It requires the sampling rate to be dependent on the time constant of the process to be controlled Sampling rate increases as the time constant value decreases Synchronization in real time between the two is required All the required operations (like measurement, control and actuation within each sampling interval) can be able to carry out Completion of the operation within the specified time: Dependent on 1. Number of operations to be performed 2. Speed of the computer Real-time clock: Its the clock added to the computer - to have the synchronization. Its signal is used to interrupt the operations of the computer at some predetermined fixed time interval Computers carry out plant input, plant output and control tasks in response to the clock interrupt. If the clock interrupt is at a faster rate than the sampling rate count of each interrupt to be to until its the time to run the tasks. Different sampling rates: used in larger plants where tasks are subdivided into groups for controlling different parts of the plant

Clock interrupt used frequently to keep a clock and a calendar and keep the computer aware of both the time and the date Clock based tasks (cyclic or periodic tasks) here, task is run once per time period T (cycle time, T) or run at exactly T unit intervals 2. Event-based Tasks (Aperiodic) Systems in which actions are performed in response to some events and not performed at response at particular times or time intervals Ex.: 1. Turing off a pump - Closing a valve when the level of a liquid tank reaches predetermined value like the one in - level of fuel in the vehicle fuel tank reaching the pump nozzle 2. Switching a motor off in response to the closure of a micro-switch indicating - that some desired position had reached Used extensively to indicate alarm conditions and initiate alarm actions Ex.: Indication of too high a temperature or too great a pressure Includes the requirement that the system must respond within a given maximum time to a particular event Uses the interrupts to inform the computer system that action is required. Smaller systems use polling - where the computer periodically asks (polls) various sensors to see if action is required Aperiodic tasks: Events usually occur at non-deterministic intervals Aperiodic tasks may have deadlines expressed in terms of having start times or finish times or even both. Ex.: Task may be required to start within 0.5s of an event occurring Task may have to produce an output within 0.5s of an event 3. Interactive systems Probably represent the largest class of real time systems Ex.: 1. Automatic bank tellers

2. Reservation systems for hotels, airlines and car rental companies 3. Computerized tills Requirement of interactive systems: can be expressed in terms such as the average response tome must not exceed Ex.: Automatic bank teller system might require an average response time not exceeding 20s Event-based systems Vs Interactive systems The two are 1. Same: since, it apparently response to a signal from the plant (in this case usually a person) 2. Different: Since, it responds a a time determined by the internal state of the computer and without any reference to the environment Ex.: Automatic bank teller - does not know that you will miss a train, or that its raining hard and you are getting wet, but its response depends on how busy the communication lines and central computers are and also your amount Clock-based systems Vs Interactive systems The two are 1. Same: since, are capable of displaying the date and time, and also they have a real time clock which enables them to keep track of time 2. Different: when the test is done whether or not the answer for the question Can the system be tightly synchronized to an external process? If answer is yes they are clock-based If answer is no they are event-based