Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 4th Aug 2005 15:01 UTC
MontaVista Linux claims that is has narrowed the real-time gap for Linux. The embedded Linux maker announced that is has successfully developed native, hard, real-time developments for the Linux kernel.
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Member since:Other RTOS's? In my book linux is NOT a RTOS. MontaVista is moving Linux in that direction but it is not a priority for Linus. If you can find one other OS that is not a mainly a RTOS that delivers the same type of performance I would be surprised.
As far as I know MontaVista is after the people that need a complete OS that is also a RTOS not the people that need an RTOS that needs not be complete.
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These numbers are totally bogus. I've been involved in Embedded systems for 20+ years. Numbers like these are not valid, unless they are quantified in context.
More details here:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS6395401765.html
I also read they claimed 98 usec latency. Whoopee! Other RTOS's can do this < 25 usec. The real question is: On what platform and subsystem?
Of course you can get fast response on a 4 GHz P4, but try that on a 200 MHz ARM. Different ball game. Most "deeply" embedded systems use processors < ~ 400 MHz, so "real time" with Linux is out of the realm of possibilities, there's just too much code to deal with, as MV pointed out. And don't forget, Linux started life as an X86 system, so running on a MIPS, ARM, or PPC, there are "hooks" here to compensate for the "intelness" of the Kernel.
It would be interesting to see some RT numbers vs. say NetBSD, which has a more well defined HAL and should therefore present better possiblities for optimization per platform.
A good accomplishment, no less, and maybe this time the work might find more acceptance in the "mainstream" Linux kernel, to help the desktop performance, etc. But compared to other RTOS's still out there, they have a long way to go.