In this paper, we consider the static multiprocessor scheduling problem for a class of multiprocessor systems consisting of m ( 1) identical processors connected by a complete network. The objective of this survey is to give a panoramic view of theoretical and/or practical approaches for solving the problem, that have been extensively conducted during the past three decades.

A coterie is a set of quorums such that any two quorums intersect each other, and is used in a quorum based algorithm for solving the mutual exclusion problem. The availability of a coterie is the probability that the algorithm (adopting the coterie) tolerates process and/or link failures. Constructing an optimal coterie in terms of the availability is therefore important from the view of fault tolerance, but unfortunately, even calculating the availability is known to be #P-hard. Recently Harada and Yamashita proposed several heuristic methods for improving the availability of a coterie. This letter first evaluates their performance and then proposes a practical method for constructing a semi-optimal coterie by using one of the heuristic methods as a main component.

This paper discusses the response time problem for concurrent processes sharing resources which are granted according to an FCFS strategy. The problem is shown to be NP-hard, but when less than four resources are shared, a restricted case is shown to be solvable in linear time.

In this paper we propose a new model for real-time programs. In the model a set of concurrent processes executed by a time-shared single processor interacts with a set of input tapes and a set of output tapes representing their environment. Processes access their tapes through reading heads and writing heads. The distinctive feature of our model is the way the movement of heads is controlled. Their movement is not controlled by programs. Instead, they move unidirectionally scanning the tapes according to the flow of time. Stimuli for a process (responses by a process) are modeled as a sequence of symbols, representing data, interspersed with sequences of the special symbol representing time intervals separating successive stimuli (responses). Next, for the model, we define important properties of real-time programs including data overrun, deadlock and correctness, and show an example of verification of these properties for a small and typical real-time program.

This paper describes the design of a software development system for real-time controllers (or small embedded computers), which provides an advanced envimonment for developing and testing of software for a real-time controller. This system offers a concurrent language called *C and its development tool including a simulator for evaluating the execution time. *C is fundamentally based on the C language, and incorporates facilities for concurrency. The simulator intends to facilitate testing of a *C program to be executed on a real-time controller. The experimental system, which targets a single CPU real-time controller with a real-time monitor, is implemented on the UNIX operating system.