What does real-time mean?
The term “real-time” is used in the software world to mean any system, software-based or otherwise, that operates on data that is occurring in the here and now (e.g., live audio) and processes it on-the-fly, with tight timing constraints, so that the data flow is continuous, synchronized, and absolutely uninterrupted, as opposed to a program or system that processes data for a finite period of time and then stops when it is done. Real-time software doesn’t stop until the user wishes it to. An example of a real-time system is the telephone system, where voice data is processed continuously. An example of a non-real-time system is a word processor, where the time it takes to do, for instance, a search-and-replace operation is neither set nor constrained, i.e., it finishes when it finishes.
