In contrast to the Hard Deadline a soft deadline is one where the timing of execution is not crucial, such as sending an email, or making a payment, a small delay or inconsistency in timing of deployment will have no further ramifications
Further Examples:
• Video playing; • audio/video encoding and decoding; • on-line image processing; • sensory data transmission in distributed systems. • The command interpreter of the user interface; • handling input data from the keyboard; • displaying messages on the screen; • representation of system state variables.