One of the most exciting, yet challenging, areas of electrical and computer engineering is embedded system design. If you aren't sure what embedded system design is, please refer to the links at the end of the article. Part of what makes embedded system design so challenging are the numerous design constraints that any embedded system requires. These can include power consumption, limited memory, I/O availability, temperature, spatial constraints, and of course overall cost. For some embedded systems, a particularly important constraint is time.

When a system has to respond to an event or request within a strictly defined time, we call this a real-time system. This defined time is referred to as a deadline. These systems must be predictable and therefore are by definition deterministic.

If a real-time system is embedded, we call it a real-time embedded system. We use these two terms interchangeably in this article. Examples of real-time embedded systems are “mission critical” applications like aircraft controls, anti-lock braking systems, pacemakers, and programmable logic controllers.

For more information, please visit: https://www.allaboutcircuits.com/technical-articles/introduction-to-real-time-embedded-systems/