Determination of tight upper execution time bounds for tasks in hard real-time environments

The timing predictability of hard real-time systems can only be assured if every component behaves deterministically. Various system design issues are stressed, from system and processor architecture to language and exception handling. In the field of architecture, some design recommendations are given and a timing predictability study of microprocessors is carried out. For certain topics in these fields, solutions to avoid nondeterminism are proposed.