Embedded Linux, Real-time Operating System Research And Development

The embedded system is not a new concept. From 1980s on, some international IT organizations and companies have begun to develop comercial embedded systems and specific operation systems. During that period, many famous embedded systems emerged, such as Palm OS, Windows CE, EPOC, LinuxCE, QNX, ECOS, LYNX and so on, which have their own advantages on stability and technology support for users. However, all these specific operation systems are kinds of commercialized products, so they are expensive. Furthermore, most of their core source code are not accessible, which causes the application software for one system cannot be compatible with other systems. Under this circumstance, Linux becomes more and more popular because of its low price, strong functions and ease porting. Many companies have shown their interests in embedded Linux.Linux systems are desktop-oriented systems, so they are not easy for real-time implementations. For the real-time requirement, it makes sense to modify the Linux. The famous RTLinux, RTAI, KurtLinux are successful examples of modifications of Linux. The Author chooses the RTAI for implementation, since it is a patch of hard real-time operation systems released with the GNU General Public License.In this thesis, the concept of embedded real-time operation systems and their development state are briefly introduced first. Then the author analyzes the real-time performance of Linux from the aspects of the measurement and characteristic of real-time operation systems and introduces several typical kinds of real-time Linux expansions. Finally, the author design, develop and implement the ZD-RTOS which is a real time operating system and has independent intellectual rights. It is based on uCLinux.Otherwise, my experimental platform is based on ARM series embedded chips, so I used a lot of ARM assembler codes. Please read other ARM reference for more information. I am sorry for that!...