SYNAPSE - AN OBJECT-BASED REAL-TIME PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Synapse is a small and expressive object-based real-time programming language that is easy to learn and use. Each object is a task built on simple primitives with well-defined semantics. Small embedded real-time microprocessor systems and device drivers are its main application area. The concurrent programming model proposed by Synapse is asynchronous message passing via interrupts. Communication between tasks is effected by sending interrupt messages to handlers (can also be called methods). This intertask communication concept is in fact a natural extension of the hardware interrupt mechanism. Synapse makes both hardware and software interrupts uniformally available in high-level language facilities. Synapse provides dynamic priority and time slice options, along with task identifiers, to allow the control of scheduling and dispatching decisions. The language guarantees strict upper bounds on the number of executions of all loops and desired response time on any task waiting. It supports exception handlers to handle exceptions caused by hardware or software. Synapse has the ability to specify and manipulate device registers for memory or port mapped devices to support both types of processor architectures. A Synapse Real-Time eXecutive (SynRTX) provides all services needed by the language. A Synapse syntax-directed (SynEd) provides an environment to the programmer for developing syntactically correct Synapse task units. A compiler translates the Synapse source code into C by inserting all the proper SynRTX system calls. The actual implementation of Synapse runs on IBM PCs or compatibles.