The use of Ada in real-time distributed systems

The authors discuss TI´s approach to supporting loosely coupled, distributed, real-time Ada applications, including special provisions necessary in an Ada runtime to support the approach. The approach chosen augments a uniprocessor Ada compiler/runtime with a distributed messaging scheme which appears to the applications programmer as an Ada package. The messaging scheme is implemented by a network operating system (NOS). Special provisions in the Ada runtime allow the NOS to effect Ada tasking in a memory- and time-efficient manner. The authors describe their experience with the above approach to supporting distributed Ada, the special provisions in the Ada runtime, and other items of interest in making Ada work for real-time embedded systems