A HIGH-PERFORMANCE END SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE FOR REAL-TIME CORBA

Many application domains (e.g., avionics, telecommunications. and mult imedia) require real-time guarantees from the underlying networks, ope rating systems, and middleware components to achieve their quality of service (QoS) requirements. In addition to providing end-to-end QoS gu arantees, applications in these domains must be flexible and reusable. Requirements for flexibility and reusability motivate the use of obje ct-oriented middleware like the Common Object Request Broker Architect ure (CORBA). However, the performance of current CORBA implementations is not yet suited for hard real time systems (e.g., avionics) and con strained latency systems (e.g., teleconferencing). This article descri bes the architectural features and optimizations required to develop r eal-time ORE end systems that can deliver end-to-end QoS guarantees to applications. While some operating systems, networks, and protocols n ow support real-time scheduling, they do not provide integrated soluti ons. The main thrust of this article is that advances in real-time dis tributed object computing can be achieved only by systematically pinpo inting performance bottlenecks; optimizing the performance of networks , ORE end systems, common services, and applications; and simultaneous ly integrating techniques and tools that simplify application developm ent.