Processor Tradeoffs in Distributed Real-Time Systems

Optimizing the design of real-time distributed systems is important since the systems are frequently critical to life. This optimization is a difficult problem, and heuristics and designer judgment are called for in the process. The chief cause of the difficulty is the large number of parameters under the designer´s control which impact performance and life-cycle cost. We study the interplay between the more important parameters in this paper using two objective measures, i. e., the mean cost and the probability of dynamic failure in [6], [10]. Among these are the processor burn-in time and processor replacement policy. A central feature of this work is a look at how the application requirements affect the optimality of the distributed systems; indeed, the application requirements are an integral part of the analysis.