RT-CRM: Real-Time Channel-based Reflective Memory

The authors propose and present Real-Time Channel-based Reflective Memory (RT-CRM)-a useful programming model and middleware communication service for constructing distributed real-time industrial monitoring and control applications on commercially available open systems. RT-CRM provides remote real-time data reflection abstraction using a simple writer-push model. This writer-push approach enables one to easily decouple the QoS characteristics of the writers from that of the readers. This decoupling is crucial in supporting different kinds of remote data transfer and access needs that one often finds in distributed industrial systems. They describe the design of RT-CRM, along with a set of easy-to-use API to access the RT-CRM service. They have implemented RT-CRM as part of a larger real-time middleware project, MidART. They address many of the important implementation issues including buffer management and QoS support. They demonstrate the feasibility of RT-CRM through a discussion of their application programming support and preliminary performance data.