That is not the definition of "hard real-time" that I, and others, use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_

That is not the definition of "hard real-time" that I, and others, use: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing Hard real-time generally means that you have an actual deadline to finish your computation, and Very Bad Things will happen if you miss that deadline. Both of your examples are soft real time.