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In order to fulfill the requirements of a real-time system, a system must react to an external event like an interrupt within a defined time frame. Therefore several mechanisms, configurations and implementation rules have to be considered.
Currently running tasks with low priority must be preempted to allow the real-time critical task to run. Preemption depends on the rules of the task’s scheduling policy. Another important aspect in a real-time system is the guaranteeing the exclusive use of certain resources for real-time tasks.
The main aim of the PREEMPT_RT patch is to minimize the amount of kernel code that is non-preemptible 1). Therefore several substitution mechanisms and new mechanisms are implemented.
There are three categories of HOWTOs:
Several real-time related publications can help broaden your knowledge about real-time systems.
Some functionality is not available on RT because its implementation is not compatible with RT. Those limitations may apply to the to the kernel as a whole or may apply to specific architecture or platforms.