Real-time operating systems on small embedded devices for industrial control and communication

Modern embedded electronic devices become more complex by the demand of the users. For this they need a powerful software foundation, which could be a general operating system like Linux. Problems arise with the strict timing demands, which can be solved by using realtime extensions. General problems and their solutions are shown. Deterministic behavior is documented by oscilloscope plots of an example system using a Motorola MPC860 microcontroller. Hints are given to fit a runnable Linux system in small flash memory. Typical application scenarios are presented.