Real Time Operating System (RTOS)

Linux is the most used operating system in today's real world.The real time Linux design
objective was to add hard real-time capabilities to a commodity operating system to facilitate
the development of complex control programs with both capabilities.

For example, one might want to develop a real-time motor controller that used a commodity
database and exported a web operator interface.

Linux has the simple and elegant design of the UNIX OSs, which guarantees a very stable,
robust and secure system. Linux is also an Open Source project, meaning that the source code
of the operating system is freely available to everybody and can be customized to user’s needs.
Linux can be customized for real-time applications and is called embedded Linux in this case.

The Open Source Community helps the growth of Linux by adding new features to the kernel,
porting Linux to new architectures, providing easy tools for application development and a host
of free device drivers/BSP support.The key RTLinux design is that the system should be
transparent, modular, and extensible. Transparency means that there are no unopenable black
boxes and the cost of any operation should be determinable. Modularity means that it is
possible to omit functionality and the expense of that functionality if it is not needed. And
extensibility means that programmers should be able to add modules and tailor the system to
their requirements.

The base RTLinux system supports high speed interrupt handling and no more. It has simple
priority scheduler that can be easily replaced by schedulers more suited to the needs of some
specific application. When developing RTLinux, it was designed to maximize the advantage we
get from having Linux and its powerful capabilities available.

Advantages Of Linux In Real Time Operating System :

 Cost: No need to spend time and money to obtain licenses and no royalties need
to be paid. Therefore, Linux is a royalty free RTOS.
 Performance: Customized Linux can provide persistent high performance by
handling a large number of users simultaneously. Linux can also be optimized with
required functions to achieve greater performance in mission critical real-time
embedded applications. Some vendors provide additional performance tuning by using
tools like a profiler.
 Flexibility: Linux can save disk space by only installing the components needed
for a particular use. Hardware support : Linux currently supports almost every processor,
including x86, ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Intel Xscale PXA2xx and IXP4xx, MIPS, Motorola
68000, PowerPC and Samsung S3C24xx. Apart from these, Linux can also support 32/64
bit architectures and both UP/SNMP modes.
 Better Memory Management: By making use of virtual memory, Linux makes the
system appear to have more memory than it actually has through sharing it between
competing processes as they need it.