《Enhancing the real-time capability of the Linux kernel》.pdf

Enhancing the Real-Time Capability of the Linux Kernel  Yu-Chung Wang and Kwei-Jay Lin Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of California, Irvine Irvine, California 92697-2625 fwangy,kling@ Abstract and traditional op erating systems with some real- time extensions (e.g. NT, Solaris). Using emb ed- Linux has b ecome one of the most p opular UNIX op- ded micro-kernel, application programmers are given erating systems. Commercial supp ort for Linux and limited supp ort on real-time scheduling and must im- adoption of Linux in real world applications have now plement many real-time primitives themselves. Tra- started to emerge. Some of the applications have strict ditional OSs with real-time extensions provide some real-time requirements. In this pap er, we discuss how limited supp ort but may still suer p erformance de- to make Linux a real-time op erating system. The real- ciencies due to the original non-real-time kernel ar- time capability is achieved by three new kernel mech- chitecture. Commercial RTOSs provide the b est sup- anisms. We p ort a microtimer into the kernel. We p ort but cost may b e a problem for many research adopt the time-driven scheduling paradigm and im- pro jects. For research pro jects on real-time system plement a time-