Ptides, a programming model for distributed real-time embedded systems, was proposed previously. In this work, we focus on a work flow that applies Ptides in a single-CPU environment using model-based design techniques. Our work flow starts with a programming environment where a real-time application is expressed as a Ptides model. The model captures both the functionality of the system and the desired timing of interactions with the environment. The Ptides simulator supports simulation of both of these aspects. Once the designer is satisfied with the design, a code generator can be used to glue together the application code with a real-time operating system called PtidyOS. To ensure the responsiveness of the real-time program, PtidyOS's scheduler combines Ptides semantics with the earliest-deadline-first policy. To minimize scheduling overhead associated with context switching, PtidyOS uses a single stack for event scheduling and execution, while still enabling event preemptions. We demonstrate the Ptides work flow through a motion control application. The automatically generated code running on PtidyOS is compared with a manual C implementation running on bare silicon. We discuss the trade offs in functionality and performance between these two implementations.

Real-time embedded software today is commonly built using programming abstractions with little or no temporal semantics. This paper addresses this problem by presenting a programming model called programming temporally integrated distributed embedded systems (PTIDES) that serves as a coordination language for model-based design of distributed real-time embedded systems. Specifically, the paper describes the principles of PTIDES, which leverages network time synchronization to provide a determinate distributed real-time semantics. We show how PTIDES can function as a coordination language, orchestrating components that may be designed and specified using different formalisms. We show the use of this environment in the design of interesting and practical cyber-physical systems, such as a power plant control system.

The Flexotask system claims to enable implementation of both real-time applications and real-time schedulers in a Java Virtual Machine using an actors-like model. The PTIDES model is an actors-like model that claims to deliver precise control over end-to-end latencies in a complex real-time system. The present work jointly investigates both claims by (1) implementing several PTIDES-based schedulers as Flexotask scheduler plugins, and (2) using the resulting system to implement a new reactive control program for a simulation of the JAviator. We present results from the realistic JAviator control application and also from synthetic benchmarks designed to shed light on the differences between the several PTIDES schedulers we implemented.

We define a family of execution policies for a programming model called PTIDES (programming temporally integrated distributed embedded systems). A PTIDES application (factory automation, for example) is given as a discrete-event (DE) model of a distributed real-time system that includes sensors and actuators. The time stamps of DE events are bound to physical time at the sensors and actuators, turning the DE model into an executable specification of the system with explicit real-time constraints. This paper first defines a general execution strategy that conforms to the DE semantics, and then specializes this strategy to give practical, implementable and distributed policies. Our policies leverage network time synchronization to eliminate the need for null messages, allow independent events to be processed out of time stamp order, thus increasing concurrency and making more models feasible (w.r.t. real-time constraints), and improve fault isolation in distributed systems. The policies are given in terms of a safe to process predicate on events that depends on the time stamp of the events and the local notion of physical time. In a simple case we show how to statically check whether program execution satisfies timing constraints.