Finally computers became small enough and inexpensive enough that an individual could own one, and hence have complete access to it. A real-time computer is one that execute programs that are guaranteed to have an upper bound on tasks that they carry out. Usually it is desired that the upper bound be very small. Examples included guided missile systems and medical monitoring equipment. The operating system on real-time computers is severely constrained by the timing requirements.
Dedicated computers are special purpose computers that are used to perform only one or more tasks.
Often these are real-time computers and include applications such as the guided missile mentioned above and the computer in modern cars that controls the fuel injection system. Communication between the the processors is easy to implement, but care must be taken so that memory accesses are synchronized. Here, memory access synchronization is not a problem, but communication between the processors is often slow and complicated. Users, however, are aware of the different computers that make up the system. Often there are redundant resources and a sharing of the workload among the different computers, but this is all transparent to the user.