Enhancing the real-time capability of the Linux kernel

Author

Wang, Yu-Chung ; Lin, Kwei-Jay

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., California Univ., Irvine, CA, USA

fYear

1998

fDate

27-29 Oct 1998

Firstpage

11

Lastpage

20

Abstract

Linux has become one of the most popular UNIX operating systems. Commercial support for Linux and adoption of Linux in real world applications have now started to emerge. Some of the applications have strict real-time requirements. We discuss how to make Linux a real-time operating system. The real-time capability is achieved by three new kernel mechanisms. We port a microtimer into the kernel. We adopt the time-driven scheduling paradigm and implement a time-driven scheduler in the Linux kernel. Finally, we insert preemption points in the kernel to make it more preemptable so that real-time jobs may experience shorter blockings. Our approach is general and may be used to enhance the real-time capability of other non-real-time operating systems as well

Keywords

Unix; operating system kernels; real-time systems; scheduling; Linux kernel; UNIX; microtimer; operating systems; preemption points; real-time operating system; time-driven scheduling; Application software; Contracts; Costs; Kernel; Linux; Operating systems; Programming profession; Real time systems; Timing; Yarn;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications, 1998. Proceedings. Fifth International Conference on

Conference_Location

Hiroshima

Print_ISBN

0-8186-9209-X

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RTCSA.1998.726346

Filename

726346