Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 22:14:28 -0700 From: "Sara L. Killingsworth" <saralk@home.com> To: saralk@home.com Subject: TimeSys Press Release-FYI For Immediate Release Contact: Sara Killingsworth 1-480-961-1515 SaraLK@Home.Com TIMESYS(R) ANNOUNCES PREEMPTIVE KERNEL SUPPORT IN TIMESYS LINUX/RT Pittsburgh, PA (September 14, 2000) —TimeSys Corporation announces enhancements to its TimeSys Linux/RT(TM) operating system distribution that make the Linux kernel preemptable. This new feature significantly enhances hard real-time responsiveness by minimizing wait times for higher priority real-time tasks. The TimeSys Linux/RT distribution has been available as a downloadable product since May 2000. It already supports hard real-time applications with support for guaranteed CPU reservations, 256 fixed priorities, priority inheritance to avoid unbounded priority inversion problems, very high-resolution timers and clocks, and support for periodic tasks. These extensions are applied to the core Linux kernel enabling hard real-time capabilities to native Linux processes, and were the first in the industry. “Hard real-time applications require predictable and bounded response times that do not violate system timing constraints. Even in a non-preemptive kernel like the previous TimeSys Linux/RT kernel, response times can be bounded,” Dr. Raj Rajkumar, Co-Founder and Chairman of TimeSys, “Hard real-time applications require predictable and bounded response times that do not violate system timing constraints. Preemptability of the Linux kernel therefore is important but not critical for hard real-time applications. However, it can improve the responsiveness of all real-time applications.” Dr. Rajkumar is a co-inventor of the family of priority inheritance protocols that solve problems of unbounded priority inversion. Such a problem was the one that haunted the Mars Pathfinder mission in 1997 on the planet surface. Customers can obtain free copies of the ‘Concise Handbook on Real-Time Systems’ from TimeSys to learn the principles and concepts behind the construction of predictable and analyzable hard real-time systems. In addition to its hard real-time support, TimeSys Linux/RT is the first commercial product that also supports temporal firewalls to provide guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) support. TimeSys also sells a suite of products called SuiteTime® that consists of TimeWarpTM integrated development environment, a profiling and visualization tool called TimeTrace® and the TimeWiz® modeling, analysis and simulation tools for real-time systems. TimeSys principals consist of internationally recognized experts in the construction and analysis of hard real-time systems. TimeSys Linux/RT makes the Linux kernel preemptable through a select set of changes to the core Linux kernel. TimeSys Linux/RT is positioned as the embedded real-time kernel of choice - it offers all the benefits of an RTOS solution, but provides the open and popular Linux environment, thereby bringing all the benefits of Linux to embedded applications. The features critical for real-time support that are already included in TimeSys Linux/RT but not all available in any other embedded Linux solution are: Pre-emptive fixed priority scheduling, 256 priorities, priority inheritance support, high-resolution timers, and TimeTrace tool to support measurement and visualization of real-time performance. In addition, TimeSys Linux/RT supports multi-processor architectures and offers CPU reservations that guarantee QoS support, features which are not available even in legacy RTOSs but are demanded by modern real-time applications. Dr. Doug Locke, TimeSys VP of Technology, added “The Linux kernel supports multiprocessing. What this means is that core kernel data structures are already protected such that multiple processors can be executing at the same time within the kernel. This SMP support had already laid a good foundation for making the kernel preemptable. We just went all the way and enabled multiple processes on one processor to be active within the kernel at the same time. We did not stop there. We have also extended our hard real-time support and QoS support to work in a multiprocessor environment.” Dr. Locke is a long-term member and contributor to the Real-Time POSIX working group, and is a member of the Real-Time Java Working Group. He is on the Architecture Board of the Object Management Group and has more than 30 years of experience in building large-scale mission-critical and distributed real-time systems. By offering these new extensions, TimeSys Linux/RT now offers hard real-time support, higher responsiveness, integrated QoS support and a suite of productivity tools that together offer better value than all other embedded Linux alternatives and even legacy RTOS platforms. Embedded and real-time application developers can now enjoy all the benefits of Linux and satisfy their real-time needs at the same time. “It is useful to know what kernel preemption means to hard real-time applications” says Dr. Manas Saksena, TimeSys Director of Software Development. “In a non-preemptive kernel, a high priority real-time process may become eligible to run but may have to wait for a low priority process currently executing a system call to exit from the kernel. The high priority process can preempt the low priority process but may have to wait for the low priority process to re-enable interrupts or release a lock. This duration is again bounded but is much smaller than the longest possible system call.” Product Availability The product is currently available for selected beta customers. The complete product will be available in the fourth quarter of this year. Currently, the Linux 2.2.15 kernel version is supported. Support for 2.4 will be available. TimeSys Linux/RT works with all desktop Linux distributions including RedHat, Debian, SuSE, Mandrake and enables hard real-time support and Quality of Service (QoS) support within these distributions. For more information about any of the above enhancements, please contact TimeSys Corporation at 1-412-681-6899 or visit http://www.timesys.com. About TimeSys TimeSys Corporation is the leading vendor of embedded real-time Linux solutions. The company has a strong team of world-renowned experts in real-time systems. The blend of application experience and research expertise in domains such as telecommunications, defense, and automotive provides TimeSys with the unique ability to apply currently evolving techniques to solve real-world problems. # # # * TimeSys, Linux/RT, TimeTrace, and TimeWiz are registered trademarks or trademarks of TimeSys Corporation. All other company names, brandnames or product names/numbers are the property of their respective holders.