Workstation support for time-critical applications

Abstract

Current workstations have a great deal of computational power. However, this power cannot be effectively delivered to support time-critical applications because the system resources are not organized nor managed in the necessary manner. What is needed is hardware and software platform technology that manages (i.e., acquires, processes, transfers, coordinates, and delivers) these time-critical data streams. This research into properly constructing, organizing, and managing system resources (according to principles of time-driven resource management) will enable workstations to solve many problems currently handled by dedicated-function embedded systems or point-solution add-on devices, while retaining the essential characteristics of the distributed workstation system environment..