Paper Info
Title
Time driven operating systems: a case study on the MARS kernel
Abstract
Time driven real-time systems are of increasing importance in the field of critical computer control applications [Sta90]. Because of their predictable behavior they are well suited for systems whose correct operation in the time domain must be guaranteed already in the design phase of an application. Time driven systems allow the proof of the correct timing behavior of an application by construction of a feasible schedule.In the MARS system [Kop89] the time driven approach is realized. The structure of the MARS operating system kernel differs significantly from that of others because of the specific demands which a distributed time driven system imposes on its underlying operating system. Based on the experiences with the first prototype of the MARS operating system [Dam89] (MARS-1), a new operating system kernel, MARS-2, has been developed from scratch. There have been some motivations for the development of MARS-2:• New processor boards ('MARS components') have been developed to fully support the MARS concepts [Ste91]. These boards provide mechanisms to achieve a high self-checking coverage and a highly predictable timing behavior.• The introduction of new concepts and mechanisms into the MARS system (e.g. membership protocol, time redundant process execution, shadow component [Kop90], [Kop91]) requires support by the runtime system.• A predictable timing behavior should be achieved by the new kernel. Although the system overhead caused by the old implementation was boundable in principle, the calculated bounds were too high to guarantee the correct timing behavior of an application already at design time [Vrc91].• The self-checking coverage of the MARS components has to be high because the fault tolerance mechanisms of MARS are based on it. Whereas the old kernel was not specifically designed in order to meet this requirement, MARS-2 uses both hardware and software mechanisms to increase the self-checking coverage to a sufficiently high degree.MARS-2 is based on a microkernel operating system architecture in contrast to the monolithic kernel of MARS-1.
Year
DOI
Venue
1992
10.1145/506378.506416
ACM SIGOPS European Workshop 2004
Keywords
Field
DocType
mars system,predictable timing behavior,correct timing behavior,self-checking coverage,new operating system kernel,microkernel operating system architecture,mars kernel,case study,real-time system,mars operating system kernel,mars operating system,mars component,fault tolerant,operating system,time domain,real time systems,causality,token passing,distributed systems
Computer science,Real-time computing,Software,Monolithic kernel,Distributed computing,Kernel (linear algebra),Time domain,Mars Exploration Program,Token passing,Microkernel,Fault tolerance,Operating system,Embedded system
Conference
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.42
7
Authors
1
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Johannes Reisinger191.77