Decentralized executive control in distributed computer systems

This paper discusses the issues involved in building a real-time control system using a message-directed distributed architecture. We begin with a discussion of the nature of real-time soft ware, including the viability of using hierarchical models to organize the software. Next we discuss some realistic design objectives for a distributed real-time system including fault isolation, independent module verification, context independence, decentralized control and partitioned system state. We conclude with some observations concerning the general nature of distributed system software.