Time to implement is a function of how much you have to write and how much you have to know to write it correctly and validate it.
Risk is the uncertainty of when it will be done and at how much cost. Done means verified working.
Cost includes cost of ownership -- cost of training, cost of hiring people that know and want to work in an environment, cost to maintain the tools and their output.
When I was an applications engineer for a company making standard computer ( VME) boards, our customers really just wanted to solve a problem and move on. They didn't want to be experts in operating systems, or computer languages, or control theory, unless those were their "cash crops". What they wanted was to take their "one thing" that they did well, and package it as a solution.
I think that the University domain and the commercial domain may differ greatly in that arena. As they should. Still, if you need some quick results in a University lab to continue an investigation's funding, I think that may come close to the commercial world.
The most frequent question we were asked about hardware was "does software already exist to drive it". This included both initialization and operating code. In the case of CPU's , it included the operating system. In the case of I/O boards, a driver was the minimum. Support in some GUI driven environment was even better. Nobody ever wanted to write a device driver.
So, I see the biggest advantage of the Linux piece of RTL being in letting Linux handle the setup of devices into reasonable operating modes, as well as the handling of GUI's and networking protocols, and even the running of portable applications.
The biggest drawback is the idea of having to create your own device initialization and handling code on the Real Time side when hard real-time behavior is required
I think that clever users can make the most of things as they are, particularly if it only requirs loading a patched kernel and building user code using a certain set of libraries.
Some examples that people can modify tthat include common applications like real-time data acquisition, communications, and control would go a long way. if you look hard now, you can probably find them. Just not in one place, with pictures and words to describe the applications, the techniques applied, and where ( and how) they might be modified and extended.
I am at a telecom house now where time-to-market for new or emeging
technology like IP telephony is becoming as important as correct,
reliable real-time behavior. Being able to run something written
as a commercially available protocol stack for Solaris on the same
processor as some hard real-time code may become a big deal here,
if one can use it a a lever to achieve both time-to-market and real-time
response. It isn't clear if that exact solution is available , currently.
I am interested in any comments those in the RTL, or those listening in on the RTL community may have.
I am also interested in a CD of editable examples which will install, compile, and run with little effort.
In a previous position, I taught field engineers Unix ny giving them a two disk "mini linux" setup that a careful neophyte could load and run.
Who else is interested in such a modifiable demo? What would it take for this to happen?
Regards,
Mike Cravens
Senior ( Real Time) Software Engineer
Alcatel USA
Paolo Mantegazza wrote:
> DOS applications! Oh well. But I am trying hard to keep this in mind
> as we add more functionality to the kernel -- the ability to work close
> to the machine in a very simple, low level environment, is critical. It's
> interesting that many people who are now investigating RTL ask us to add
> feature from other systems, but the current RTL users often say that it is
> the lack of these features that makes the system useful to them.I enlist myself among the last ones but, forgive me if I insist, the
combination of a habstraction layer and various real time application
interfaces is the best way to satisfy them all.Ciao, Paolo.
--- [rtl] ---
To unsubscribe:
echo "unsubscribe rtl" | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] OR
echo "unsubscribe rtl <Your_email>" | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
----
For more information on Real-Time Linux see:
http://www.rtlinux.org/~rtlinux/
-- Alcatel USA Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1000 Coit Road Plano, Texas 75075 **** The opinions expressed are not those of DSC Communications, Inc ****
