A flexible run-time support for distributed dependable hard real-time applications

Typically, most distributed, dependable, real time systems designed in the past can only meet the particular requirements of the application domain to which they were targeted. This approach led to specific, non flexible, dedicated and non reusable solutions, often based on specialized hardware. The paper presents an alternative approach where a flexible run time support for distributed dependable hard real time applications is built on top of off-the-shelf hardware. This support has been designed by considering three fundamental and complementary aspects: real time, to support applications that exhibit strict timing constraints; fault tolerance, to provide a high degree of reliability through the transparent provision of fault tolerant mechanisms; and flexibility, to allow the modifications of components of the run time support without having to rewrite it entirely, and to support a large range of application domains, real time kernels and hardware