On Benchmarking of Real-time Mechanisms in Various Periodic Tasks for Real-time Embedded Linux

Abstract

It is a real-time system that the system correctness depends not only on the correctness of the logical result of the computation but also on the result delivery time. Real-time Operating System (RTOS) is a software that manages the time of a microprocessor to ensure that the most important code runs first so that it is a good building block to design the real-time system. The real-time performance is achieved by using real-time mechanisms through data communication and synchronization of inter-task communication (ITC) between tasks. Therefore, test on the response time of real-time mechanisms is a good measure to predict the performance of real-time systems. This paper aims to analysis the response characteristics of real-time mechanisms in kernel space for real-time embedded Linux: RTAI and Xenomai. The performance evaluations of real-time mechanism depending on the changes of task periods are conducted. Test metrics are jitter of periodic tasks and response time of real-time mechanisms including semaphore, real-time FIFO, Mailbox and Message queue. The periodicity of tasks is relatively consistent for Xenomai but RTAI reveals smaller jitter as an average result. As for real-time mechanisms, semaphore and message transfer mechanism of Xenomai has a superior response to estimate deterministic real-time task execution. But real-time FIFO in RTAI shows faster response. The results are promising to estimate deterministic real-time task execution in implementing real-time systems using real-time embedded Linux.