HERNDON Virginia — (company press release) — Zentropix (a subsidiary of Lineo, Inc.) today announced availability of a set of Perl bindings that allow programmers to use the RTAI real-time programming API from a scripting environment. This allows simple access to a Linux based soft real-time programming environment.

The bindings extend the LXRT technique in the Real Time Application Interface (RTAI) developed at Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale Politecnico di Milano (DIAPM) to a scripting environment. “One of the hardest things when starting real-time programming is getting used to the API,” said Stuart Hughes, director of research at Zentropix. “Making the API available from a scripting environment makes it easier for people to start using RealTime Linux.”

RTAI facilitates hard real-time programming on a Linux system by using its API within a user-written kernel module. RTAI continued its successful development track by the introduction last year of LXRT. LXRT provides soft real-time support for Linux using a new paradigm. In the next few weeks a further release of RTAI will extend LXRT to add a hard real-time mode in user space.

Rather than try to alter the Linux scheduler, LXRT takes a new approach whereby a buddy (proxy) hard real-time process carries out the scheduling duties of the user space process. As the user process is still subject to being blocked by Linux kernel activity, this is considered a soft real-time solution. Despite this, on a machine of average loading it still affords a low latency, high resolution, real-time solution. LXRT is found in two formats on the distribution, the original version from DIAPM, and the more sophisticated 'informed' version which was enhanced by Pierre Cloutier of Poseidon Controls Inc.

Steve Papacharalambous of Zentropix said “the principle virtue of this technique is that students and newcomers can get used to the hard real-time API from the relative safety of user space. Once the code has been proven, it can be migrated to the hard real-time domain with relative ease”.

Licensing

RTAI, LXRT, and the LXRT Perl bindings are all released under the terms of the GNU LGPL.

Distribution information

Zentropix distributes a RealTime Linux installation CD that comes with a pre-patched Linux+RTAI+debug kernel and debugging tool. Please go to www.zentropix.com and follow the links to products for information on obtaining a CD-ROM as well as the new LXRT Perl bindings for RTAI-0.9a.

Other technical information about RTAI, and downloads may be found at the DIAPM (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Aerospaziale Politecnico di Milano) site, www.rtai.org.

About Zentropix (www.zentropix.com)

Born from the military simulation industry, where real-time computing is critical, Zentropix was founded in August 1997, and has offices in the US and UK. By providing validated distribution of RealTime Linux combined with support, custom engineering, and training, Zentropix meets the needs of software developers and corporations, who are now developing embedded and real-time applications. In February 2000, Zentropix was acquired by Lineo, Inc., an embedded Linux system software developer in Lindon, Utah.

About Lineo, Inc. (www.lineo.com)

Lineo, Inc., a leading developer of embedded Linux system software, develops, markets and sells embedded Linux system software and applications that provide OEMs and consumers with simple, low-cost software for interacting with the Internet via embedded devices. Lineo owns the Embedix product family, including Embedix Linux, Embedix SDK and Embedix Browser.

 
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