The stack resource protocol based on real-time transactions

Current hard real time (HRT) kernels have their timely behaviour guaranteed at the cost of a rather restrictive use of the available resources. This makes current HRT scheduling techniques inadequate for use in a multimedia environment where one can profit by a better and more flexible use of the resources. It is shown that one can improve the flexibility and efficiency of real time kernels and a method is proposed for precise quality of service schedulability analysis of the stack resource protocol. This protocol is generalised by introducing real time transactions, which makes its use straightforward and efficient. Transactions can be refined to nested critical sections if the smallest estimation of blocking is desired. The method can be used for hard real time systems in general and for multimedia systems in particular.