Innovations in Component-Based Scalable Real-Time Operating Systems

"Embedded Research Solutions is developing an open architecture innovative real-time operating system (iRTOS) for embedded systems. The iRTOS uses a component model for user tasks instead of the more traditional process or thread model. Components aredesigned as objects, using either object-oriented software development for larger systems, or object-based design (i.e. without inheritance) for smaller systems. The scalable iRTOS incorporates many research innovations into a single package. Morespecifically, some of the key features include limited preemption scheduling that guarantees better performance than fully preemptive kernels; precise mixed-priority real-time scheduling algorithms that combines advantages of fixed and dynamic priorityalgorithms; efficient implementation of aperiodic servers; models for reusable real-time device driver components, configurable real-time inter-object communication that enables transparent communication across embedded networks, and error detection withpriority handling for both timing and non-timing errors. Components enable the use of modern software engineering technology for efficiently developing quality software, such as visual and model-based design tools, aspect-oriented software design, and useof automated analysis and synthesis tools. The commercial benefits of creating the open RTOS would lie primarily in a set of precision tools that would be co-developed with the RTOS to synthesize app