Producer-consumer paradigm in real-time applications

One of the most important characteristic of real-time systems is that they must react to external stimuli (inputs) and, in a timely manner, affect the environment in which they operate. Often real-time systems are used in control systems where the input data must be analyzed, computed and afterwards the real-time system must send responses to control the overall system in a pre-defined timelymanner. In this paper a model for constructing real-time application that interacts with external environment is described. The model is based on the producer/consumer paradigm for inter-process communication and provides a framework for defining initial task specifications. Based on this model, the resulting specification of system’s tasks could be tested against schedulability using a graphical framework.