Atlas DAQ Evaluation of a RealTime eXtension(RTX) on WindowsNT.pdfVIP

Atlas DAQ Evaluation of a Real-Time eXtension(RTX) on Windows/NT Authors : Yoshiji YASU and Gabriele CARCASSI Keywords : Real-time, Windows/NT, POSIX, Benchmark Abstract A Real-Time eXtension(RTX) for Windows/NT was evaluated with some benchmark pro- grams. The evaluated parameters were; • CPU performance : integer and floating-point • Memory access speed • Thread switching speed The used platforms were Pentium166MHz PC and Pentium100MHz VME computer. The result was evaluated in comparison with that from PowerPC VME computers with LynxOS. NoteNumber : 125 Version : 1.0 Date : 12-04-99 Reference : http://atddoc.cern.ch/Atlas/Notes/Note125-1.html 1 Introduction A word ‘real-time’ is defined as follows; Realtime in operating systems: the ability of the operating system to pro- vide a required level of service in a bounded response time. Data acquisition sometimes may need real-time func- tions. The functions include not only guarantee of worst case but also being lightweight, small footprint, high speed and so on. POSIX[posix1b] promoted implementing real-time extension on general purpose operating system, such as LynxOS, Solaris, Linux and so on. It is desirable to use standard OS interface such as UNIX or Windows/NT on real-time OS instead of special OS interface on real-time OS. VenturCom[venturcom] supplied a real-time ex- tension on Windows/NT called RTX. RTX enables application components or modules that require deterministic and high-speed response times, along with other non-real-time application components, to work together on a com- mon Windows/NT system. Fig.1 shows RTX architecture. Win32 processes Win32 RTAPI processes Win32 Win32 RTAPI