Task Management in Ada-A Critical Evaluation for Real-time Multiprocessors

As the cost of processor hardware declines, multiprocessor architectures become increasingly cost-effective and represent an important area for future research. In order to exploit the full potential of multiprocessors, however, it is necessary to understand how to design software which can make effective use of the available parallelism. This paper considers the impact of multiprocessor architecture on the design of high-level programming languages and, in particular, evaluates the language Ada in the light of the special requirements of realtime multiprocessor systems. We conclude that Ada does not, as currently designed, meet the needs for real-time embedded systems.