Theory versus practice in real-time computing with the Java/sup TM/ platform

The discipline of computer science has always featured a large gap between theory and practice. For example, both the object oriented paradigm and garbage collection techniques go back to at least the 1960s (H. Schorr and W. Waite, 1967; O.J. Dahl and K. Nygard, 1966) but they have only seen widespread commercial acceptance this decade. The Java/sup TM/ programming language has been an important factor leading to the commercial popularization of these techniques. The field of real time computing has suffered from a particularly acute disconnect between theory and practice. Java/sup TM/ technology can be applied to the building of real time systems through a set of standard extensions to the Java/sup TM/ platform. A set of extensions that bring the core benefits of the platform to real time will advance the commercial state of the art. It will help to narrow the gap between theory and practice. The paper explores different aspects of computer systems theory as applied to real time systems. It analyzes whether they are ready to be reduced to practice and standardized.