Concurrency in a C++ real-time environment

This work describes the design and development of a concurrent objectoriented system in C++ with real-time constraints. The ability to model shared objects with changing local states, dynamic reconfigurabilty and inherent concurrency were design criteria. The ACTOR model of concurrency developed by Hewitt [1977] and Agha [1986] was adopted for this research. The system was developed under DOS as a class library that C++ programs could invoke. Another design criteria was that the system should be able to access memory beyond the DOS 640KB barrier. The developed system was compared to a procedure-oriented system developed using C language. The comparison between applications showed that all advantages of object-oriented programming are achievable in the new system at a fractional loss of efficiency when compared to the procedure-oriented system. In addition to this, the protected mode class library could access and manipulate memory beyond the DOS 640KB barrier.