Title :
Engineering safe, real-time distributed control systems
Author :
Croll, Peter ; Rudram, Chris ; Chambers, Colin ; Uchihira, Naoshi
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Sheffield Univ., UK
Abstract :
Reactive computer control systems need to track the behaviour of their inherently parallel physical environment. Hence, most non-trivial industrial applications may depend on concurrent modelling techniques to handle system complexities including hard real-time constraints. Failure of such systems can lead to unacceptable consequences and can therefore be deemed as safety-related with respect to their application. Parallel and distributed systems can exhibit undesirable behaviours, e.g. deadlock, which could render a control system unsafe. The paper proposes that a set of undesirable parallel behaviours can be classified as unsafe for all applications and reviews a technique that can be employed to avoid or mitigate against them, The approach needed by software engineers of parallel and distributed systems to facilitate this and meet the minimal safety standards is also given
Keywords :
computerised control; control systems; distributed control; parallel programming; real-time systems; safety-critical software; software engineering; behaviour tracking; concurrent modelling techniques; deadlock; hard real-time constraints; minimal safety standards; nontrivial industrial applications; parallel physical environment; reactive computer control systems; safe real-time distributed control system engineering; software engineering; system complexities; Application software; Concurrent computing; Control systems; Distributed control; Electrical equipment industry; Physics computing; Real time systems; Software safety; Software standards; System recovery;
Conference_Titel :
Euromicro Conference, 1998. Proceedings. 24th
Conference_Location :
Vasteras
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-8646-4
DOI :
10.1109/EURMIC.1998.711838