Here are Jim Ready's answers:

• What is real-time? — The right results on time.
• What is hard real-time? — The right results late are wrong. (more…)

Here are Myron Zimmerman's answers:

• What is real-time? — A real-time system provides specified system services with known timing and latency characteristics, so that applications can be designed and developed that meet perscribed timing constraints. (more…)

Here are Mitch Bunnell's answers:

• What is real-time? — The ability of a system to respond to external or clock events within a bounded period of time. (more…)

Here are Steve Furr's answers . . .

1. What is real-time? — Real-time is a property of systems that is often misunderstood. I will attempt to provide a summary of some of the critical elements of real-time computing, but for a formal treatment of the issue with rigorous definition of the terms, I would strongly encourage visiting (more…)

Other Embedix components and features

Other components of Embedix are more in keeping with an open source philosophy. As one might expect, Embedix uses GCC as its compiler. Prebuilt binaries are provided for the supported target architectures. Also, GDB is used for debugging, and is used without significant modifications. (more…)

Lineo's real-time Linux option

About a year ago Lineo was on an acquisition spree, acquiring a number of small companies that provided Embedded Linux products. Among the companies they acquired were Zentropix, Moreton Bay, and RT-Control. In the process they became involved in a number of open-source projects, each with its own philosophy, programming model, and documentation. (more…)

Taking Embedix for a spin

To develop a sense of how practical it would be to configure systems using Embedix, I decided to build a system for each of the single-board computers in my Embedded Linux Toolkit Test Lab (described in the introduction to this series), and (at a minimum) get the system booted… (more…)

Managing a project

In the Embedix model, a build is a project, consisting of a directory tree rooted at a user-settable location. Basic project settings are included in a project file; for example, the settings for a test project running on my laptop was named laptop.epj. (more…)

Thoughts on the kernel configuration process

One problem that arises from the nonstandard kernel configuration process concerns the maintainability of the system over different kernel versions. Embedix SDK 2.0 ships with 2.4.5-pre1 and includes an ECD file for that version. (more…)

The commercial embedded software market is worth $3.2 billion, according to Venture Development Corp. (VDC), which has shared some data prepared by VDC analyst Chris Lanfear for a late-May presentation. The commercial market does not include the non-commercial, in-house embedded software market, which VDC believes is much larger than the commercial market. (more…)

The following articles and whitepapers provide further background and perspective on the use of Java technologies in Linux-based embedded systems and smart devices . . .

• Pondering our Linux/Java future –… (more…)

• Chai Appliance Platform (HP)
• (more…)

A world in transition

The world of intelligent devices is changing dramatically. The computerized devices around us are getting smarter, they're increasingly connected and interdependent, and they're becoming vastly more numerous. And all this is happening at an ever increasing rate. (more…)

Part 2: RTLinux — the Present

RL: I understand you're nearly ready to release version 3 of RTLinux, which is currently in beta. Could you briefly describe what's new in that release? (more…)

Part 3: RTLinux — the Future

RL: What are we likely to see in terms of new developments for RTLinux over, say, the next year? (more…)