Pushing Processor Limits With Real-Time Operating SystemsSponsored by: NATIONAL INSTRUMENTS

Sept. 1, 2005

Hard RTOSs tend to run close to the hardware limits and provide very predictable priority and scheduling mechanisms. This lets developers fit an application into the constraints imposed by the operating system and hardware. It does not necessarily me

William G. Wong

Designers utilize real-time operating systems (RTOSs) so applications can meet predefined timing constraints. The RTOS guarantees time-related quality of service. Hard real-time systems try to minimize system overhead in areas such as interrupt latency and context switching so application code can respond to external changes and output information in a deterministic fashion.

It does not necessarily mean that the system runs as fast as possible. Rather, the system operates as predictably as possible. Typically, the operating system must then prevent an arbitrary application from using operations, such as disabling interrupts, that would have harmful effects on other applications trying to handle time-critical operations.

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About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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