Hard Real-Time Linux for Off-The-Shelf Multicore Architectures

Abstract

This document describes the research results that were obtained from the development of a real-time extension for the Linux operating system. The paper describes a full extension of the kernel, which enables hard real-time performance on a 64-bit x86 architecture. In the first part of this study, real-time systems are categorized and concepts of real-time operating systems are introduced to the reader. In addition, numerous well-known real-time operating systems are considered. QNX Neutrino, RT_PREEMPT Linux Patch and HLRT Linux Patch are analyzed in detail. The core concepts of these systems are shown and discussed. Furthermore, a test suite is developed, which is used to obtain expressive benchmarks from the systems that were analyzed before. The systems are evaluated on the basis of these benchmarks and compared to the real-time extension which is developed in this work. A requirements catalogue is defined based on the analysis of the stated operating systems. The design of a real-time extension is developed based on the specification catalogue and the identified core concepts. Furthermore, the concrete implementation of the developed real-time extension is presented in detail. Finally, the benchmarks of all analyzed systems, including the developed real-time extension, are compared to each other and evaluated.