13.1 Why Performance Engineering Is Important

13.1.1 Time as a Design Driver

Many software developers – probably the majority, in fact – place great emphasis on producing designs that are functionally correct. This is especially true of Object-Oriented (OO)-based projects because OO techniques tend to concentrate on abstract logical features such as:

• Structure (class and class relationships)
• Encapsulation and information hiding
• Object and class interfaces and dependencies
• Object behavior

However, effective real-time embedded models concentrate on factors that are important in the real world. And, unfortunately, there is a significant mismatch between these two models. Real-world software designs are primarily shaped by the following:

• The natural simultaneous (concurrent) behavior found in real systems
• The need to coordinate and/or synchronize operations
• The need to respond to many and varied timing requirements (especially...