Real-time performance and middleware on multicore linux platforms

An increasing number of distributed real-time applica-tions are running on multicore platforms. However, existing real-time middleware (e.g., Real-Time CORBA) lacks sup-port for scheduling soft real-time tasks on multicore plat-forms while guaranteeing their time constraints will be sat-isfied. This paper makes three contributions to the state of the art in real-time system software for multicore plat-forms. First, it offers what is to our knowledge the first experimental analysis of real-time performance for vanilla Linux primitives on multicore platforms. Second, it presents MC-ORB, the first real-time object request broker (ORB), designed to exploit the features of multicore platforms, with admission control and task allocation services that can pro-vide schedulability guarantees for soft real-time tasks on multicore platforms. Third, it gives a performance evalua-tion of MC-ORB on a Linux multicore testbed, the results of which demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of MC-ORB.