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.

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* 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.