Formal description of real-time systems : a review

Work on the formal description and analysis of real-time systems has followed two paths. On one side, it has considered the specification of real-time systems, the design of language constructs for real-time programming, and semantic models to describe the properties of real-time programs. On the other side, there has been a large body of work analysing the performance of real-time systems in terms of the feasibility of schedules and the use of resources, especially in relation to hard-real-time problems. This paper reviews some of this past work and examines how real-time computations are modelled in a proof-theoretic framework and in scheduling analyses. The object of this review, and indeed of other contemporary work in the field, is to examine whether it is possible to relate issues of correctness and performance, eg interpreting the semantics of execution of real-time programs in terms of scheduling solutions to real-time problems