The Smile Toulouse teams will meet you for a friendly breakfast dedicated to embedded systems. The opportunity to discuss update methods for embedded devices as well as the use of Xenomai for Linux RT, over a coffee! On the program for this morning, two conferences presented by our Smile experts.
“Update methods in embedded systems”, by Rémi Subra, Tech Manager Smile
Nowadays, it is important to be able to update the software present in embedded systems, in order to correct security vulnerabilities, keep them in operational condition, or even add new functionalities.
After introducing the different possible strategies, we will look at some existing software solutions. We will discuss integration into a system generated by Yocto. Finally, we will discuss the tools to monitor deployment across the entire equipment fleet.
“Xenomai for Linux RT”, Pierre Ficheux, CTO Smile
Using Linux for real-time applications is never an easy task. For this, the Linux Foundation maintains the PREEMPT_RT patch. This patch is quite simple to set up and use. It is (almost) hardware architecture independent and uses the same API as the standard kernel. Xenomai is based on another technology. Instead of modifying the Linux kernel to improve task scheduling, Xenomai uses a real-time co-kernel seen as a module of the Linux kernel. Most of the time this leads to better performance because the co-kernel approach (initially based on I-pipe) is more efficient than a PREEMPT_RT modified Linux kernel. During the talk we will describe the architecture of Xenomai, how to set it up and use it. We will then discuss the migration of the I-pipe approach to Dovetail. Finally we will present the EVL project which is a new real-time core and the basis of the future Xenomai 4. The conference will end with a comparison of performances between Xenomai and PREEMPT_RT via a demonstration.