Snapshot is to create an instant image of a file system. Creating a snapshot image with little processing and space overheads is critical to provide the continuous data service during backup. (more…)

Currently can combination of Linux and RTAI be run on various platforms. Yet the decision to choose one of them relies on many factors of which the stability of the microprocessor in various conditions is one but not the last of them, obviously. In this paper we want to present the development project where at start the combination Intel StrongARM/Linux/RTAI seemed very reliable and promising, at least by… (more…)

Researchers, developers and system integrators require more openness in control systems in order to design, develop and rapidly integrate functionalities to fulfill new application requirements. Even if several robot control vendors provide their products with customized development tools, low cost and not proprietary solutions should be preferred to face the rapid market changes and to reduce control life… (more…)

Intelligent robots are capable of handling complex tasks that includes recognition of vocal commands, logical inference, autonomous navigation and manipulation, etc. To accomplish intelligent behaviors, researchers have proposed a number of control software architectures such as tripodal schematic control architecture (TSCA). (more…)

Talk abstract: Linux has quickly progressed from an OS for PCs, a single device, to a “micro” operating system able to support thousands of different devices. Working with Linux in embedded form brings, of course, a whole new set of technical obstacles. These include: initialization and configuration of the system in the absence of a BIOS; reduced memory and/or filesystem space; porting and… (more…)

Talk abstract: This talk explored alternative ways to guarantee quality-of-service (QoS) and introduces the concept of a Resource Kernel a means to provide OS-based guarantees. Shortcomings of Linux relative to QoS and Resource Kernel requirements were discussed, and alternative approaches to address them were reviewed. (more…)

Talk abstract: This presentation reviewed and discussed the evolution of the Linux embedded PowerPC software. Topics included a brief history, some programming tips, and product success stories. Members of the audience learned what — and what not — to do when trying to port to custom hardware, and where to look for help. (more…)

A deterministic response time is the most important and necessary feature in Hard Real-Time Systems. This is the main reason why some years ago it was unthinkable to implement Hard Real-Time Systems with the Java language, an object-oriented, interpreted language, mainly because Java uses garbage collection to implicitly deallocate dynamic memory; This is widely known as“the garbage collection problem''… (more…)

There has been increasing interest in the real-time community for Quality of Service (QoS) based systems, such as multimedia and telecommunication systems. In this paper, we deal with scheduling components integrating new QoS functionalities under Linux/RTAI (Real-Time Application Interface) [Rta04]. (more…)

Scheduling theory has shown an impressive evolution due to the intensive research done in this area. As a result, a lot of scheduling algorithms has been proposed to support a large amount of applications. RTLinux uses a fixed-priority scheduler and although fixed-priority scheduling is suited for a large number of real-time applications, it has some drawbacks. (more…)

This paper presents the experimental study of the performance of Real-Time Linux based on the x86 architecture. Holding the hardware constant and using different measurement methodologies, we measured a list of performance (ten kinds of test), including the overheads incurred during operating systems context switching test, conditional variable test, rt-fifo read/write test, mbuff read/write test, etc. (more…)

Among solutions to allow sub-millisecond determinism for real-time Linux applications, the co-kernel approach is found in many products and is probably to most widely known — and used — technique. In the past few years, this approach evolved, at least in the RTAI project, towards a better integration of the co-kernel deterministic services to Linux:

• the co-kernel interfaces were brought to… (more…)

Cleopatre is an open source and flexible real-time operating system, that supports many components, features and optional dynamics aspects. The Cleopatre components are classified in four groups: the scheduling components (including static and dynamic schedulers), the synchronization components (including priority inheritance and ceiling protocols), the aperiodic tasks servicing components (including… (more…)

ARTiS is a real-time extension of GNU/Linux dedicated to SMP systems (Symmetric Multi-Processors). ARTiS divides the CPUs of an SMP system into two sets: real-time CPUs and non real-time CPUs. Real-time CPUs execute preemptible code only, thus tasks running on these processors perform predictably. (more…)

The LibeRTOS project focuses on producing a stable, robust, and highly configurable Linux platform for industrial automation and other real-time applications. This paper provides an overview of LibeRTOS and discusses its most important capabilities which include: (1) high resolution time keeping, (2) extremely flexible and fine grain performance data collection support, (3) highly configurable scheduling… (more…)