In this guest column, Lineo's Jeff Dionne demystifies the issues of real-time, and clarifies the distinctions between hard and soft real-time operating systems (RTOSes). Dionne writes . . .

“The idea and ideal of real-time has become very important to Linux developers. Linux has grown into a full-featured operating system, suitable for many embedded applications. One area that has received a great deal of attention is the potential for using Linux, RTLinux, and RTAI in mission critical applications.”

“The line between what is real-time and non real-time appears to be a moving target. System developers need to understand the hard floor requirements for real-time. Hard real-time is an absolute deterministic response to an event. It is not based on average response time; this is when hard real-time goes soft.”

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