question about unix & real time

[Doug Gwyn <gwyn>]

>     A real-time system is one in which, if some a certain time constraint
>     is not met by the software, catastrophic failure of the system will
>     result.

Geoff made some good points about using UNIX for real-time applications.
My definition of "real-time" would be similar to his, and my claim is
that UNIX can be adapted to real-time use in this sense with a modest
amount of work; indeed, as I pointed out, we did so.  However, such an
application requires careful consideration and design, and control over
the suite of processes that may be running (e.g., "sync" is outlawed).
I would agree that UNIX in its present form does not support a wide
range of different real-time applications, nor would a simple small set
of changes support such a range.

Interrupt latency can be improved dramatically by putting UNIX's critical
regions under semaphore control rather than the simplistic interrupt
lock-out that is currently used.  This is not a small change but people
have done it for certain versions of UNIX.  I would like to see this in
the "standard" version of UNIX also.