A Multi-Periodic Synchronous Data-Flow Language

Implementing real-time critical systems is an increasingly complex process that calls for high-level formal programming languages. Existing languages mainly focus on mono-periodic systems, implementing multi-periodic systems with these languages is possible but inefficient. As a result, current practice usually consists in writing one program for each different rate and then letting a real-time operating system handle the multi-rate aspects. This can be a source of non-determinism as communications between processes of different rates are not precisely defined. We propose a new language, built upon synchronous data-flow languages, to handle multi-rate systems properly. It has strong formal semantics, which prevents non-deterministic communications, and relies on real-time primitives that enable efficient use of existing multi-periodic schedulers.