Title :
Support for real-time computing within general purpose operating systems-supporting co-resident operating systems
Author :
Bollella, Gregory ; Jeffay, Kevin
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., North Carolina Univ., Chapel Hill, NC, USA
Abstract :
Distributed multimedia applications are typical of a new class of workstation applications that require real-time communication and computation services to be effective. Unfortunately, there remains a wide gap between the development of real-time computing technology in the research community and the deployment of real-time solutions in commercial systems. We explore technology for allowing two operating systems, a general purpose operating system and a predictable real-time kernel, to co-exist on the same hardware. We discuss the problems of multiplexing shared devices and partitioning shared data structures to accommodate two operating systems, and present a CPU executive that allows the IBM Microkernel (a derivative of the Mach microkernel) with an OSF/1 server to co-exist with a simple real-time kernel we have built. We also extend the traditional theory of scheduling periodic tasks on a uniprocessor to accommodate the case where a real-time kernel is allocated only a fraction of the total CPU capacity
Keywords :
multimedia systems; operating system kernels; operating systems (computers); processor scheduling; real-time systems; scheduling; software engineering; CPU capacity allocation; CPU executive; IBM Microkernel; Mach microkernel; OSF/1 server; co-resident operating systems; commercial systems; distributed multimedia applications; general purpose operating systems; hardware; predictable real-time kernel; real-time communication services; real-time computation services; real-time computing support; real-time computing technology development; shared data structure partitioning; shared device multiplexing; uniprocessor periodic task scheduling; workstation applications; Application software; Central Processing Unit; Distributed computing; Hardware; Kernel; Multimedia systems; Operating systems; Real time systems; Scheduling; Workstations;
Conference_Titel :
Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium, 1995. Proceedings
Conference_Location :
Chicago, IL
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-6980-2
DOI :
10.1109/RTTAS.1995.516189