Real-Time Performance and Middleware on Multicore Linux Platforms

An increasing number of distributed real-time applications are running on multicore platforms. However, existing real-time middleware (e.g., Real-Time CORBA) lacks support for scheduling soft real-time tasks on multicore platforms while guaranteeing their time constraints will be satisfied. As evidenced by recent products from major CPU vendors, multicore processors (which include several cores on a single chip) are poised to dominate the real-time and embedded systems space. Dual-core chips are popular in today's market, and many CPU vendors have released designs with more than two cores. Applications that process large numbers of transactions with soft real-time constraints are likely deployed on multicore platforms even today. However, standard operating systems such as Linux can not effectively schedule soft real-time workloads on such platforms.