Priority Consistency Management in Distributed Real-Time Operating Systems

The importance of distributed real-time systems such as air control systems, factory automation, robotics and teleconferencing systems is widely recognized. However, satisfying the rigid timing constraints required by such distributed real-time applications is very difcult. Synchronization and communication are two common sources of unbounded priority inversion which may make the behavior of systems unpredictable and unanalyzable. In this paper, we propose real-time resource manager which maintains the consistency of priorities and eliminates unbounded priority inversion in distributed real-time systems. We also show how to apply it to inter process communication(IPC) and synchronization facilities in Real-Time Mach. Real-time resource manager integrates priority systems of the IPC and the synchronization facilities by utilizing a common mechanism. We present the algorithms and the structure of real-time resource manager and the evaluation of this approach.