Hardware implemented real-time operating system (abstract only)

Abstract

Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) usually implemented as software component at fundamental layer of embedded system which consumes computing time and memory resources. This will introduce extra overhead and latency to the system. In addition to this, the software layer of RTOS also indirectly raises the complexity of system software. Shifting RTOS from software to hardware is an inspiring idea to abstract RTOS layer out from the embedded system software framework. It has the advantages of helping to reduce the system software complexity, as well as improves the system performance by reducing overhead and latency of RTOS. This paper presented a Simple and Efficient hardware implemented Real-Time Operating System (SEOS) architected for high portability and scalability. SEOS operates at co-processor level as an independent hardware component. It contains all essential OS services needed for embedded system design. This includes kernel scheduler, inter-task communication and synchronization (i.e. mutex, semaphore, mailbox), timer and IRQ handler. The application software interfaces with SEOS through a set of standard Application Programming Interface (API). Furthermore, SEOS is also equipped with Generic Bus Interface and Interconnect Bridge to enable effortless OS porting across different processor platforms. These innovative approaches have made SEOS to be plug-and-play in nature. Our test result shows that SEOS is having performance improvement over commercial software based RTOS, µC/OS-II, in several areas. SEOS consumes 31.6% less overhead in context switching, improves task level interrupt latency by 83.5%, shorten inter-task communication latency by 71.9% and significantly improves on performance jitter.