A teaching environment for the development of parallel real-time programs

The teaching environment described here is introduced as an effective way for learning how to deal with the problems related with parallel/distributed real-time systems. The educational process has three main domains: the cognitive; the affective; and the psychomotor. Normally, the student dominates the first, but lacks more interest for the subject and a familiarisation with the challenges of real problems in the area. The environment has a visual interface with the user whose aim is to facilitate the learning process in the generation and debugging of source code of applications developed for the parallel kernels and in particular for Virtuoso (Virtual Single Processor Programming System (TM)). The environment is composed of four tools: a parallel programs generator; a worst case execution time analyser; a scheduling analyser; and a parallel debugger. The first tool was released as a teaching environment for Virtuoso (TEV). The second of these tools is already under implementation and the last two tools will be available in the near future. Roughly, this visual environment should be able to provide continuity in the development of projects using the most common development methods (traditional or object-oriented), by offering support during the phases of implementation, debugging and testing.