LinuxDevices.com is pleased to publish an overview and papers from the Ninth Real-Time Linux Workshop held in Linz, Austria, Nov. 2-3, 2007. The papers, available for free download without registration, span a broad range of topics, ranging from fundamental real-time technologies to… applications, hardware, and tools.

As usual, the conference was organized by the Real-Time Linux Foundation. This year, it was held at the Johannes Kepler University (JKU) in Linz, Austria.

Photos by Mike Rumpler, from the Ninth Real-time Linux Workshop, in Linz, Austria
(Click each image to enlarge. More photos are available here)

Organizers Peter Wurmsdobler and Nicholas (“Der Herr Hofrat”) McGuire wrote of this year's event, in part…

The 9th Real Time Linux Workshop was organized by the Real Time Linux Foundation, Inc. and by Institute for Measurement Technology Professor Zagar. It was supported by CELinux, IBM, and OSADL, and covered the current status of real-time in GNU/Linux systems, including safety aspects and automation issues.

The co-located ELC-E (Embedded Linux Conference Europa) covered current developments in the field of consumer electronics, with a clear focus on embedded. This ended up being a quite consistent mix, as many of the embedded systems need real-time capabilities, and many of the real-time developments are targeting embedded devices.

I would like to start this article with an apology to the seven participants from Kenya, D.R. Congo, and Nigeria that were declined a visa by Austrian authorities. This was a disturbing development, and should be a wake-up call to the free-software community. If we fail to keep our minds open, and if xenophobic fears prevent the free exchange of ideas, then it is up to us to correct such developments by not silently accepting them. In response to this, the Real Time Linux Foundation plans to hold RTLWS11 (2009) in Afrika, and we hope that the free-software community as well as commercial open-source users will support this effort.

Now to the pleasant part.

Opening with a keynote by Tim Bird on Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CE Linux Forum), this workshop covered real-time and embedded in four tracks as well as in a showroom where a surprising amount of automation-related exhibitions were available.

The second day opened with a key-note by Peter Hofstee on the CELL broad band architecture (CELL BE). Mr. Dofstee detailed a fascinating architecture, that is much too interesting to only be used in game consoles.

The second day of presentations concluded with a panel discussion about “The Ideal GNU/Linux Distribution.” The panel included representatives from Debian, MontaVista, WindRiver, TimeSys, Thales, and LinuTronix, and concluded that the ideal GNU/Linux has not yet been sighted.

Presentations at RTLWS9 are published as papers, although unfortunately some authors “forgot” to submit their final papers. So for those that had no opportunity to attend, LinuxDevices is providing the space to publish all papers for the general audience – so thanks to LinuxDevices.com for offering the Real Time Linux Foundation this opportunity!

ELC-E is a bit less formal, and did not have a paper requirement. However, many presentations from that event are available online, here.

In the context of RTLWS9/ELC-E, the OSADL working group Safety Critical Linux was launched with a kickoff meeting together with key industrial players. OSADL together with representatives of Siemens, Thales, IBM, Wago as well as the Technical University of Vienna, Institute of Computer Technology (ICT) and Lanzhou University, Distributed and Embedded Systems Lab (DSLab), set the initial road-map for the working group to deliver its final proposal by February 2008. This working group was formed to coordinate the growing interest of industry to utilize the vast resources of free-software/open-source in safety related systems.

We would like to thank those that supported RTLWS9, notably:

• Prof. Bernhard Zagar and Renate Wolfmayr from the University of Linz
• Harald Hatzenbichler and Roland Poenitz from IBM for their support both financially as well as with a really cool key-note
• Tim Bird and Ruud Derwig from CE Linux Forum for organizing the embedded tracks as well as providing travel assistance for a number of speakers
• Carsten Emde, OSADL for their sponsoring support

Further we would like to announce that RTLWS10, Nov 2008 will be held in Mexico at the University of Guadalajara. Details to follow here.

The links below will lead you to a summary of each talk, and to a link for downloading the associated paper (PDF file). Note: Paper titles followed by “*” are not currently available for download — check back later for the latest downloads. Enjoy . . . !

Real-Time Linux Applications

• An Opensource Distributed Platform for the Control of the Puma 560 Manipulator
  Gianluca Palli and Claudio Melchiorri
• High-gain observers and Kalman filtering in hard real-time
  Nicolas Boizot, Eric Busvelle, Juergen Sachau
• Cell/B.E. Based Robot Controller
  Matthias Fritsch, Ronny Klauck, Marc Tritschler
• Autonomous Robot Running Linux for the Eurobot 2007 Competition
  Tran Duy Khanh, Zidek Martin, Benda Jan, Kubias Jiri, and Sojka Michal
• Providing Support for Multimedia-Oriented Applications under Linux
  Sebastian Schoning
• Industrial serial digital PID controller in RTlinux*
  Juan F. Florez, Jaime O. Diaz
• Simulink Target for Real Time Linux Extension: Hardware Control using a Wrapper for Comedi
  Klaus Oppermann, Daniel Schleicher and Bernhard G. Zagar
• Simulink Target for Real Time Linux Extension: Remote Control via Command Line and Web Interface
  Daniel Schleicher, Klaus Oppermann and Bernhard G. Zagar
• A Train Position Monitoring System Based on COTS and Free Software Components
  Donald Wayne Carr, Ruban Ruelas, Raol Aquino Santos, Apolinar Gonzalez Potes
• COTS and Free Software Components for Safety Critical Systems in Developing Countries
  Donald Wayne Carr, Ruban Ruelas , Raol Aquino Santos, Apolinar Gonzalez Potes
• Linux as a handheld OS in Lenovo
  Zhang Feng and Lin Songtao
• Linux for Safety Critical Systems in IEC 61508 Context
  Nicholas Mc Guire

Real-Time Linux Networks

• A Client-Server Based Real-Time Control Tool for Complex Distributed Systems
  Axenie Cristian, Stancu Alexandru, Zanoschi Aurelian, Pascalin Andrei, Perjeru Marius, Maftei Florentina
• UDP for real-time Linux
  Platschek Andreas
• Implementation of Model Based Networked Predictive Control System
  Ahmet Onat, Emrah Parlakay
• Exploiting the hard realtime features of PROFINET by a realtime capable Linux
  Karl-Heinz Krause
• Real-Time CORBA performance on Linux-RT_PREMMPT
  Manuel Traut
• The OSADL Fieldbus Framework*
  Robert Schwebel

Real-Time Linux Concepts

• Status overview of real-time*
  Thomas Gleixner
• LITMUS-RT: A Status Report
  James H. Anderson, Bjoern Brandenburg, Aaron Block John Calandrino, Uma Devi, and Hennadiy Leontyev
• RT Patch for Celleb – Patch Status and Performance Measurements*
  Tsutomu OWA
• Realtime capabilities of low-end PowerPC and ARM boards for embedded systems
  Alexander Bauer
• Evaluation of Linux rt-preempt for embedded industrial devices for Automation and Power technologies – A case study
  Morten Mossige, Pradyumna Sampath, Rachana Rao
• Assessment of the Realtime Preemption Patches (RT-Preempt) and their impact on the general purpose performance of the system
  Arther Siro, Carsten Emde, Nicholas McGuire
• Is it possible to run a Kernel-based Virtual Machine (kvm) without affecting the real-time capabilities of the host system?*
  Carsten Emde, Michael Kremer and Jorg Muller

Real-Time Linux Kernel

• PaRTiKle OS, a replacement of the core of RTLinux
  S. Peiro, M. Masmano, I. Ripoll, and A. Crespo
• XM-FIFO: Interdomain Communication for XtratuM
  Shuwei Bai, Yiqiao Pu, Kairui She, Qingguo Zhou, Nicholas MC Guire, Lian Li
• XtratuM for PowerPC
  Zhou Rui, Wang Baojun, Arthur Siro, Nicholas McGuire, Zhou Qingguo
• Serving non real-time tasks in a reservation environment
  Luca Abeni, Claudio Scordino, Giuseppe Lipari, and Luigi Palopoli
• Lightweight RTAI for IA-32
  Michael Heimpold and Robert Baumgartl
• The design and implementation of L4FIFO with lock-free
  Cheng Guanghui, Nicholas MC Guire, Li Lian, Zhou Qingguo
• Bounding disk I/O response time for real-time systems
  V. Brocal, M. Masmano, I. Ripoll, and A. Crespo
• Prototyping User-Oriented Addressing Model in Linux Kernel
  Maoke Chen, Taoyu Li, Dong Zhou and Xing Li

* Note: Paper titles followed by “*” are not currently available for download — check back later for the latest downloads.