RTOSVisor
RTOSVisor is a software company acontis technologies to simultaneously several real-time operating systems (RTOS Real Time Operating System) and other operating systems (GPOS, general-purpose operating system, such. As Windows and Linux ) on a computer with multi-core processor running at can. Thus, both the tasks are control or control technology in real-time performed, and the use of general techniques such as graphical user interfaces and network or database allows connections. The combination of both areas of activity is often necessary in industrial automation , medical technology or in test and measurement technology .
properties
RTOSVisor represents the fifth software generation and mainly consists of the real-time capable RTOS-VM hypervisor and the RTOS-Virtual Machines (VM). These are summarized in the RTOS Virtual Machine Framework (VMF) (see picture). The RTOS VM hypervisor, like any other Type 2 hypervisor, uses the device drivers of the operating system on which it is running. If the hypervisor uses the user GPOS directly, as in the previous generation, this cannot be restarted independently of the hypervisor and the RTOS. Since this independence is sometimes a requirement in practice, acontis technologies presented RTOSVisor in 2009 . The user GPOS is not identical to the hypervisor operating system and the two operating systems are therefore independent of each other. The first version of the hypervisor operating system uses a Linux operating system that has been reduced to a minimum and does not have a graphic surface ("headless"). This is booted first, loads and starts the RTOS virtual machines including the RTOS VM hypervisor. Building on this basic scope, one or more instances of the same or different RTOS can initially run.
The hardware-supported virtualizations Intel VT or AMD-V , which have only recently been introduced in Intel and AMD processors, are not required for RTOS operation alone due to the paravirtualization of the RTOS, which is compatible with the previous versions . If hard real-time operation is required, the hardware-supported virtualization must not be used on the RTOS, since the real-time capability would suffer due to the "pretense" of hardware and the resulting administrative work. Therefore, the RTOS, which hardware is to control in real time, must be allowed direct and exclusive access to the respective hardware, memory and processor cores. This creates so-called partitions for each RTOS. This procedure can be aptly described with the statement "Partition where we can, virtualize where we must". Intel VT or AMD-V is only required with RTOSVisor if one or more non-real-time GPOS (such as Windows or Linux) are to be operated in addition to the RTOS. For this operating mode, the minimal Linux operating system is expanded to include the widely used open source software components KVM and QEMU . The Linux kernel, KVM and QEMU are subject to the GPL and as such are not a commercial part of RTOSVisor. They only form an infrastructure in which non-real-time GPOS can run in addition to the real-time RTOSVisor components including the RTOS. In future RTOSVisor versions, Linux, KVM and QEMU can be exchanged for other mainstream GPOS virtualization solutions such as Microsoft Hyper-V .
Techniques such as PCI or VGA pass through are used to ensure that the performance of the GPOS remains acceptable despite virtualization . Like the RTOS, the GPOS has direct access to the hardware to be controlled, such as graphics or hard disk.
As with the previous generation, the first core can be split between a GPOS and an RTOS operating system. This means that Windows or Linux can be operated together with an RTOS on inexpensive processors with just a single core.
The communication between the GPOS and the RTOS can take place through direct shared memory access, which is managed via corresponding VMF API calls. Another possibility is through a virtual network in which each operating system can have its own IP address.
The name "RTOSVisor" originated from "RTOSWin" by keeping the term "RTOS" and replacing "Win" with "Visor". The omission of "Hyper" from "Hypervisor" took into account the fact that, for marketing reasons, many new competitors in the market have sparked a great deal of hype about this topic, which the product family described here has already covered for a long time.
As part of an outsourcing contract, acontis technologies acquired from KUKA Roboter in 2010 the exclusive rights to independently develop and market the KUKA robot real-time software.
Development history
In the following, the development history of RTOSVisor, the associated company relationships and the naming are explained.
Active plug-in cards
CAREEN 68k
In 1987, LP Elektronik GmbH , which from the established 1986 L Eibinger & P artner GbR had emerged, a Europe Card Bus (ECB) single-board computer in the 10 cm x 16 cm Europe format with the 16-bit Motorola 68000 before microprocessor. The name of this first product was CAREEN 68k , what C omputer for A ENERAL R Fechner e insatz and E chtzeit- N EXPLOITATION with Motorola 68 was 000 processor. OS-9 from the US company Microware was used as the real-time operating system . CAREEN 68k could also be plugged into an ECB slide-in housing, which had to contain a CP / M computer based on Intel 8080 or Zilog Z80 . At the time, CP / M from the US company Digital Research was a widely used operating system for general computer applications. There were powerful programs for CP / M, such as the WordStar text editor and other useful and powerful programs for the office environment. The first intention of CAREEN 68k was therefore to be able to use the powerful CP / M software tools for OS-9. Initially only for software development, later also for control systems. In the OS-9 world, software development tools and everything that was widely used in the early “personal computer world” were very sparse and special (e.g. vi or Emacs as an editor). This combination of powerful and widespread software tools (“general computer use”) with real-time operating systems (“real-time use”) from the mainstream office world was retained as the basic idea for all subsequent generations of product families.
With the appearance of IBM-PC-compatible computers with the Microsoft MS-DOS operating system and the resulting decline of CP / M, an adaptation of both the CAREEN 68k hardware card and the communication software became necessary. On the hardware side, this was realized by an adapter with which an ECB card could be plugged into an IBM-PC XT or compatible. The bus in the XT-PC was only 8 bits wide, which represented a certain bottleneck in communication. On the software side, the communication software was ported from CP / M to MS-DOS, whereby the OS-9 part was largely retained. This software package was named "DOS-9", which came about through the merging of the two operating system names "DOS" and "OS-9". The bundle of hardware and software was offered as a CAREEN-68k / PC package.
In order to eliminate the bottleneck in communication, the AT adapter was created for the IBM-PC / AT compatible computers . With this bus mastering, bidirectional memory access from one system to the other was also possible on additional cards and I / O ports of the PC. The AT adapter had two slots for up to two Eltec IPIN expansion modules, which were used for hardware-specific expansion and whose connections were led to the outside on the plug-in card sheets.
This "real-time extension" of conventional computer systems brought about by active additional hardware represented the first generation of the product family.
C20
The C20 (short for C AREEN 680 20 ) came onto the market in 1989 and was a long PC plug-in card without an ECB bus connection, instead with a direct connector for the 16-bit IBM PC AT bus . The more powerful 32-bit Motorola 68020 processor and OS-9 as the operating system were used as the processor. The C20 had two slots for up to two Eltec IPIN expansion modules, which were used for hardware-specific expansion of the C20 card and whose connections were led to the outside on the plug-in card sheets.
LC20
LC20 was the name of the C20 successor, which came on the market in 1991 and featured a Motorola 68EC020 economy processor. The "LC" stood for "Low Cost", which was reflected in the higher integration density and fewer expansion slots.
On the software side, the emerging Windows was taken into account and the product name "DOS-9" was expanded to "WinDOS-9". With this product it became possible to use all the tools available in Windows for OS-9. In addition to OS-9, VxWorks began to be adapted as an alternative real-time operating system in 1992 . Since VxWorks at the time only by very expensive Unix - workstations could be developed, all necessary for VxWorks development was first GNU toolchain for MS-DOS and 32-bit DOS extender DJGPP ported.
VxWin LC20
In 1994, in addition to OS-9, VxWorks was also offered as an alternative real-time operating system for the LC20 . This is what "VxWin" was created for the first time, by the contraction of vxw orks and Win generated dows. The name "WinDOS-9" could no longer be retained, however. VxWin LC20 referred to both the hardware and the software components.
On the software side, the Windows part of the communication software "WinDOS-9" could be largely retained and expanded.
Passive PC plug-in cards
LP Real-Time Accelerator
In order to achieve still the goal of the Office - Mainstream bring together poker world and the specialized world of real-time operating systems, because of the crisis in the German mechanical engineering in 1992, a radical new approach was necessary. Plug-in cards with active additional processors became too expensive. A solution had to be found to achieve the same goal at significantly lower costs. Thanks to Moore's Law , the computing power of the PC processors had already become so great at that time that they could take over the computing work of the expensive additional processors . To do this, however, the problem of the lack of real-time capability of the Windows 3.11 operating system had to be solved. This was solved by means of the non-lockable interrupt request (NMI, Non Maskable Interrupt), which is available on every PC processor and accessible via the IOCHCK signals for XT / AT and via SERR for PCI buses via PC plug-in cards.
A simple and inexpensive plug-in card with only a single passive, programmable logic module was able to convert normal lockable interrupts of the PC buses into NMIs and thus bring about hard and deterministic real-time behavior under the Windows operating system. A patent was applied for for this process in 1994 and was granted in 2000. The card and the central chip were called LP-Real-Time Accelerator (LP-RTAcc) (" Real-Time Accelerator "). In addition to this functionality of an interrupt controller for nested NMIs, the RTAcc chip had a programmable timer in order to be able to generate a periodic real-time interrupt with a programmable cycle time.
After the hardware requirements were met, was with the LP RTWin Toolkit ( R eal T ime for Win created a product dows Toolkit), which the customer could apply through their own programming of real-time interrupt handlers the hard real-time capability of Windows itself. In addition, experiments were carried out with Linux for the first time in order to make it hard real-time capable via the NMI. However, due to resource reasons, this could not be pursued further.
All products based on LP-RTAcc formed the second generation and the product name was prefixed with “LP” for the first time. This was based on Microsoft, which had also put “MS” in front of all their products (MS-DOS, MS-Windows, MS-Word etc.).
LP-VxWin RTAcc
The programming of real-time capable interrupt handling routines using the LP-RTWin Toolkit was not sufficient for applications that required the full performance of a real-time operating system . That is why the porting of VxWorks to the basic functionality of the LP-RTWin Toolkit began in 1994 , resulting in LP-VxWin RTAcc . At the beginning of 1995 the company KUKA-Roboter - und Schweißanlagen GmbH was won as a customer for this product, which is still in development. In 1996, KUKA presented a world first, a Windows95 PC-based controller for its industrial robots , at the Hanover Industry Fair .
This robot controller based on LP-VxWin RTAcc with a Windows user interface was the founder of the immense business success that KUKA Roboter has enjoyed since 1996. In order to secure this technology for itself, KUKA Roboter acquired around 51% of LP Elektronik GmbH in the same year.
Real-time extensions
LP-VxWin Lite
In order to be able to use LP-VxWin on computers that could not have a plug-in for RTAcc technology (e.g. portable laptop computers), the development of real-time expansion technology was started in 1997, which, like all subsequent generations, managed without any hardware thus founded the third generation. This real-time expansion solely through software is basically only possible on the 32-bit family of Microsoft Windows, starting with Microsoft Windows NT . While the real-time expansion technology of 16-bit Windows (3.11, 95, 98 and Millennium) held a worldwide monopoly by means of the NMI-LP-Electronics, several other competitors were added from 1996, which also offer real-time expansion technologies for the 32-bit Windows Family offered.
The addition “Lite” was intended to indicate that the real-time capability of this product was initially not as high as that of the other product family members based on hardware technologies. However, this shortcoming was soon eliminated.
CeWin and VxWin
In 2002, CeWin was introduced, a product that used Microsoft's Windows CE operating system instead of VxWorks . Windows CE is a fully-fledged real-time operating system from version 3. As this enabled GPOS Windows 2000 or XP and RTOS Windows CE to be operated together on one computer, users had the advantage of working exclusively with Microsoft products and technologies in both worlds to be able to.
The name CeWin arose from the contract of "Windows CE " and " Win dows 2000" and was based on the same real-time expansion base technology as VxWin.
Since in the same year KUKA Roboter took over LP Electronics and renamed it KUKA Controls, the prefix “LP” in front of the product name was dispensed with.
Virtual machines with hypervisor
RTOSWin
In addition to VxWorks and Windows CE, there are a number of other real-time operating systems for Intel - X86 processors . In order to be able to use these as RTOS together with Windows and the least possible adjustment work and to take account of new developments in the processor market such as “ multicore ”, the development of the fourth product generation began in 2006. This was given the family name RTOSWin , which came about through the general term "RTOS" instead of a real-time operating system abbreviation . RTOSWin is based on the specially developed "Virtual Machine Framework " (VMF), ie a domain-specific framework for virtual real-time machines, whereby the programming interface of the framework, the "VMF-API", is used to paravirtualize the operating system. The “content” of the framework are the “RTOS Virtual Machines” and the “RTOS-VM Hypervisor”. This is a type 2 hypervisor with the required paravirtualization of the operating systems used and Windows as the simultaneous hypervisor operating system and GPOS.
The development of this Generation 4 and thus the Virtual Machine Framework (VMF) was completely awarded as a service contract to acontis technologies GmbH, also based in Weingarten, following the closure of KUKA Controls, Weingarten and the integration into KUKA Roboter at the beginning of 2006 . As a spin-off of the former LP electronics expertise, acontis technologies GmbH was able to demonstrate the technical basics.
In addition to the RTOS VxWorks and Windows CE already used on the older technologies, another RTOS QNX was added in 2008 , which was adapted to the VMF by the Königsbrunn company IBV through paravirtualization and is sold under the name QWin. In addition, adjustments to On Time RTOS-32 were made in 2008 by acontis ( RTOS32Win ) and EUROS Embedded Systems ( EUROSWin ).
RTOSLin
In 2009 , RTOSLin took the opposite path for the first time: Instead of just expanding the number of RTOSs as before, Linux also supported an additional GPOS for the first time . The basic VMF technology was retained, so that all RTOSs that could previously be combined with Windows are now also available for real-time use under Linux. The family members in detail thus result in VxLin , CeLin , QLin , RTOS32Lin and EUROSLin .
The name RTOSLin was generated by the fact that "Lin" (by Lin ux) instead of "win" (from Win dows) was hired back.
Web links
- Just in time , Linux Magazine 6/2008
- KVM project
- QEMU opensource processor emulator
- acontis technologies GmbH
- KUKA robots
Individual evidence
- ↑ AT-RTOSVisor: Real-time hypervisor platform. acontis technologies GmbH, accessed on December 12, 2009 .
- ↑ Rick Kuhlman, Jeffrey Phillips: Parallel, Wireless and Real Time. (PDF 95KB) National Instruments Germany GmbH, September 2009, accessed on December 12, 2009 .
- ↑ Real-time hypervisor: who should pay for it? ( Memento of the original from March 31, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , February 24, 2009, accessed November 21, 2009
- ↑ LP - VxWin VxWorks Together with Windows on the same PC ( Memento of the original from July 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Dedicated Systems Magazine 1997, (PDF 95 kB), accessed November 21, 2009
- ^ Device for operating a control application, PatentDe, accessed on November 30, 2009
- ↑ LP-RTWin Toolkit ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Dedicated Systems Magazine 1997, accessed November 30, 2009
- ↑ Styring med soft-PLC ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.9 MB), Afgangsprojekt ved Instituttet for Konstruuttet og Styreteknik, DTU 1998, accessed on November 30, 2009
- ↑ Open Real-time Robotics Control - PC Hardware, Windows / VxWorks Operating Systems and Communication ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Juhani Heilala VTT Manufacturing Technology 2001, accessed November 30, 2009
- ↑ Usability Study of available Real-Time Operating and Communication Systems ( Memento of the original from January 28, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , OCEAN Open Controller Enabled by an Advanced real-time Network Contract IST-2001-37394 2002, accessed November 30, 2009
- ↑ Real-time platforms for Windows for the development of PC-based robot controls ( memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Lecture at the 35th meeting of the VDI / VDE-GMA-FA 4.13. 2003, (PDF 1.6 MB), accessed on November 21, 2009
- ↑ Teamwork gets robots on their toes , IEE 2003, (PDF 49 kB), accessed on November 21, 2009
- ↑ Real-time Windows - 30,000 robots can't be wrong! ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Industrial Networking 2003, accessed November 30, 2009
- ↑ 11. přednáška (lecture) , Ing. Martin Molhanec, CSc. 2004, accessed November 30, 2009
- ↑ Microsoft Windows CE.net ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , (PDF 390 kB), accessed on November 21, 2009
- ↑ Real-time with Windows XP , (PDF 500 kB), A&D 2004, accessed on November 21, 2009
- ↑ How to bring Microsoft Windows CE and WindowsXP together on the same PC , PC104 Embedded Solutions 2004, (PDF 2 MB), accessed on November 21, 2009
- ↑ KUKA Roboter presents VxWin and CeWin , KUKA Roboter 2006 newsletter, accessed on November 21, 2009
- ↑ QNX meets Windows: IBV now also shows QWin® with SMP ( memento of the original from July 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , February 4, 2009, accessed November 21, 2009
- ^ RTOS at will , Computer & Automation 2008, accessed November 21, 2009
