Slowing Down to be Faster - C++ and Divisible Algorithms in Real-Time Systems

We have the great please to welcome Patrice Roy to our user group. Patrice has been playing with C++, either professionally, for pleasure or (most of the time) both for over 25 years. After a few years doing R&D and working on military flight simulators, he moved on to academics and has been teaching computer science since 1998. Since 2005, he’s been involved more specifically in helping graduate students and professionals from the fields of real-time systems and game programming develop the skills they need to face today’s challenges. The rapid evolution of C++ in recent years has made his job even more enjoyable. He’s been a participating member in the ISO C++ Standards Committee since late 2014 and has been involved with the ISO Programming Language Vulnerabilities Committee since late 2015.

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Abstract:
A Real-time system needs to respect a set of constraints; typically, such systems are defined as systems for which delivering the right results but not on time is as bad as not delivering the right results. Depending on the system, the impact of not respecting these constraints can go from unpleasantness or discomfort (so-called "soft" real-time) to actual physical harm ("hard" real-time).

Most real-time constraints fall in one of four categories: a task has to be [b]rief (execution has to complete within a fixed amount of time once started), [i]mmediate (low-latency: execution has to start within a fixed amount of time following some event), or iterate with [r]egularity (e.g.: task has to be executed n times per second) or [c]onstancy (e.g.: task has to be executed every 1/nth of a second).

In the case of [r] and [c]-type tasks, there tends to be some residual time between two consecutive executions of a task. That time can be spent sleeping, but it can also be invested towards performing non-real-time tasks which help the real-time system behave better as a whole.

In this talk, we will examine how one can leverage C++ to achieve the goal of making a real-time system behave better by changing the way non-real-time tasks are performed.

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Schedule:
19:00 (CET) -- Start of the videostream