Some practical issues of the transputer based real-time systems

An overview of the real-time features of transputers and Occam is presented. Real-time issues such as scheduling, timing, concurrence, low level support, communication, and exception handling are studied. Based on the shortcomings of transputers and Occam, some compensating methods have been proposed and implemented. Some test results are reported. It is concluded that transputers and Occam provide quite good support for implementing real-time systems. The ability to allow for both genuine and quasi-parallel processing gives the transputer a distinct advantage over conventional computer systems for real-time use. Occam, which was designed to execute on the transputer type of architecture, directly addresses issues of real-time system programming, such as the representations of parallelism, timing, assigning priorities to processes, resource allocation, low-level machine access, and flexible device interfacing