Real-time behaviour in a heterogeneous environment?

Because of the availability of cheap network technology and computing power, people and business are becoming increasingly dependent on computing systems. Timeliness and correctness, therefore, become the most urgently requested system properties, often subsumed in the notion of quality of service. Real-time computing is becoming an enabling technology for many important applications such as flexible manufacturing, multimedia, robotics and process control. Traditionally, real-time systems have been realized as isolated, embedded systems, dedicated to provide the requested service for single, dedicated applications like automatic brake systems in vehicles or control systems for nuclear plants. Unfortunately, the solutions provided there no longer suffice for more complex systems as they are encountered in many of the above mentioned applications. Their most distinguishing requirement is the need of the computing system to dynamically adapt to changing conditions. Little work has been done on (operating) system mechanisms and algorithms, flexible enough to cope with the new requirements.