This is a compact and easy-to-understand “how-to” paper about low-end microprocessor task scheduling. The paper is almost a recipe for how to create a real-time system on a low-budget processor project.

Ness and Karsai do not give any elaborate mathematical equations or proofs of how their task scheduler works, but the paper has well-written outlines of the task-modeling language, the offline scheduling algorithm, and the code generator.

The explanations and a couple of nice pictures might make an embedded-world reader say: “I want to repeat this work in my own lab--tonight!” On your way to the lab to test the scheduler algorithm, you might remember that you did not see: details or the syntax of the task-modeling language or code generator, reference works cited, or one-to-one comparison charts for competing scheduling algorithms.

“Never mind; the algorithm is interesting,” you will say, but you will need to find the details of the algorithm before sleeping in your lab tonight.