Absolutely Positively on Time: What Would It Take?

Despite considerable progress in software and hardware techniques, when embedded computing systems absolutely must meet tight timing constraints, many of the advances in computing become part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Although synchronous digital logic delivers precise timing determinacy, advances in computer architecture and software have made it difficult or impossible to estimate or predict the execution time of software. Moreover, networking techniques introduce variability and stochastic behavior, and operating systems rely on best effort techniques. Worse, programming languages lack time in their semantics, so timing requirements are only specified indirectly. In this column, I examine the following question, “if precise timeliness in a networked embedded system is absolutely essential, what has to change?” The answer, unfortunately, is “nearly everything.”