The Real-Time Application Interface

The Real-Time Application Interface provides Hard real-time capabilities in a Linux environment. It provides FIFO, semaphore, mail-box, message and RPC communication primitives and includes a Posix compliant subsystem. Hooking on to Linux is provided via a Real-Time Hardware Abstraction Layer, hence diminishing kernel intrusion.

Built on top of RTAI, the LXRT module provides for seamless integration of normal Linux processes and RTAI-bound real-time tasks. It enables these two types of tasks to communicate symmetrically while enabling normal Linux processes to enter the real-time execution domain using a single system call and provides memory protection and trap handling for hard real- time tasks. RTAI is supported by various other projects including the Linux Trace Toolkit and RTNet.