Real Time Operating System

Manvendra Singh

Embedded Operating System

A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) intended for real-time applications. Such operating systems serve application requests nearly real-time. A real-time operating system offers programmers more control over process priorities. An application's process priority level may exceed that of a system process. Real-time operating systems minimize critical sections of system code, so that the application's interruption is nearly critical. A key characteristic of a real-time OS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter. A hard real-time operating system has less jitter than a soft real-time operating system. The chief design goal is not high throughput, but rather a guarantee of a soft or hard performance category. A real-time OS that can usually or generally meet a deadline is a soft real-time OS, but if it can meet a deadline deterministically it is a hard real-time OS. A real-time OS has an advanced algorithm for scheduling. Scheduler flexibility enables a wider, computer-system orchestration of process priorities, but a real-time OS is more frequently dedicated to a narrow set of applications. Key factors in a real-time OS are minimal interrupt latency and minimal thread switching latency, but a real-time OS is valued more for how quickly or how predictably it can respond than for the amount of work it can perform in a given period of time.

QNX

As a microkernel-based OS, QNX is based on the idea of running most of the OS in the form of a number of small tasks, known as servers. This differs from the more traditional monolithic kernel, in which the operating system is a single very large program composed of a huge number of "parts" with special abilities. In the case of QNX, the use of a microkernel allows users (developers) to turn off any functionality they do not require without having to change the OS itself; instead, those servers are simply not run. The system is quite small, with earlier versions fitting on a single floppy disk. QNX Neutrino (2001) has been ported to a number of platforms and now runs on practically any modern CPU that is used in the embedded market. This includes the PowerPC, x86 family, MIPS, SH-4 and the closely related family of ARM, StrongARM and XScale CPUs.

RTLinux

RTLinux or RTCore is a hard realtime RTOS microkernel that runs the entire Linux operating system as a fully preemptive process. It was developed by Victor Yodaiken (Yodaiken 1999), Michael Barabanov (Barabanov 1996), Cort Dougan and others at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and then as a commercial product at FSMLabs. Wind River Systems acquired FSMLabs embedded technology in February 2007 and now makes a version available as Wind River Real-Time Core for Wind River Linux. RTLinux was based on a lightweight virtual machine where the Linux "guest" was given a virtualized interrupt controller and timer - and all other hardware access was direct. From the point of view of the real-time "host", the Linux kernel is a thread. Interrupts needed for deterministic processing are processed by the real-time core, while other interrupts are forwarded to Linux, which runs at a lower priority than realtime threads. Linux drivers handle almost all I/O. First-In-First-Out pipes (FIFOs) or shared memory can be used to share data between the operating system and RTCore.

VxWorks

VxWorks is a real-time operating system made and sold by Wind River Systems of Alameda, California, USA. Intel acquired Wind River Systems on July 17, 2009. VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems. Unlike "self-hosting" systems such as Unix, VxWorks development is done on a "host" machine running Linux, Unix, or Windows, crosscompiling target software to run on various "target" CPU architectures. VxWorks is a proprietary, real-time operating system developed by Wind River Systems of Alameda, California, USA in 1987. VxWorks has been ported to a number of platforms and now runs on practically any modern CPU that is used in the embedded market. This includes the x86 family, MIPS, PowerPC, Freescale ColdFire, Intel i960, SH-4 and the closely related family of ARM, StrongARM and xScale CPUs. The key features of the current OS are:

Multitasking kernel with preemptive and round-robin scheduling and fast interrupt response Memory protection to isolate user applications from the kernel SMP support Fast, flexible inter-process communication including TIPC Error handling framework Binary, counting, and mutual exclusion semaphores with priority inheritance Local and distributed message queues POSIX PSE52 certified conformance File system IPv6 networking stack VxSim simulator

Windows CE

Windows CE (also known officially as Windows Embedded Compact or Windows Embedded CE post version 6.0 and sometimes abbreviated WinCE) is an operating system developed by Microsoft for minimalistic computers and embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinctly different operating system[citation needed] and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows. It is not to be confused with Windows XP Embedded which is NT-based. Windows CE is supported on Intel x86 and compatibles, MIPS, ARM, and Hitachi SuperH processors.

Windows CE

Windows CE is optimized for devices that have minimal storage -a Windows CE kernel may run in under a megabyte of memory. Devices are often configured without disk storage, and may be configured as a closed system that does not allow for end-user extension (for instance, it can be burned into ROM). Windows CE conforms to the definition of a real-time operating system, with a deterministic interrupt latency. From version 3 and onward, the system supports 256 priority levels and uses priority inheritance for dealing with priority inversion. The fundamental unit of execution is the thread. This helps to simplify the interface and improve execution time.