Abstract :
Of central importance to the economic realization of minicomputer applications is the realtime executive. Applications such as data acquisition, process control, communications, and business data processing will be briefly discussed to identify their needs in a realtime executive. The main elements of these executives discussed include memory management, scheduling, data structuring and file handling, inter-program communication, and control structures. The characteristics of any realtime executive are mainly determined by the selection of alternatives for the realization of each of these elements. Various realtime executives will be discussed from this point of view with emphasis on the way the choice of design of the various key elements affect the application of the system.