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From: ben@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com (Benjamin Ellsworth)
Newsgroups: comp.realtime
Subject: Re: What is "real-time" really?
Message-ID: <111040002@hpcvlx.cv.hp.com>
Date: 27 Feb 90 19:02:24 GMT
References: <98692@linus.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Co., Corvallis, OR, USA
Lines: 24


> First, it is not enough to say that a real-time system is one which 
> must provide answers by a specific time.  Consider a company's
> payroll system, which absolutely must compute the pay of each 
> employee by the 29th of the month (otherwise all hell breaks loose). 
> This system has "hard" timing requirements, but I doubt that many
> people would want to consider it a real-time system.

Why not?  The system can be considered to have failed if the time
constraint is not met.

The only reason that I can see for not considering the payroll system
(or your nervous system for that matter) a "real time" system is
hidebound thinking -- if it ain't exclusively chips and wires, it ain't
a System.

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