INtime Multi-core Enhancements

Sharing a single CPU core between the Windows OS and the INtime RTOS provides sufficient performance for a wide range of applications. One millisecond cycle times are served quite well by this arrangement and have been deployed on standard desktop and industrial PC platforms (e.g., single-core Intel Pentium processors running at speeds of 1-3GHz) for many years. But, there are some applications that require even faster cycle times (e.g., 50-200 microseconds); for these applications multi-core processors can improve cycle times by an order of magnitude.

Multi-core processors enhance INtime RTOS technology because they do not require that each operating system share CPU instruction cycles and key processor resources. On a single-core processor a full machine context must be saved when switching between operating systems. Saving and restoring machine contexts incurs overhead, impacting interrupt latency and performance. In the worst case, this overhead can contribute as much as 10 to 30 microseconds of interrupt latency or jitter; for one millisecond and slower cycle times such jitter rates represent only a few percent of variation. More info

In a dedicated multi-core configuration real-time event latencies are reduced by an order of magnitude when compared to equivalent single-core hardware, to as little as 1-3 microseconds. In such a configuration cycle times of 50-200 microseconds are acheivable, allowing for very high resolution control loops.

The INtime RTOS can dedicate an entire CPU core in a multi-core processor to its kernel and your real-time applications; 100% of the resources of the dedicated core are available to your real-time processes. The remaining CPU cores are automatically allocated to the Windows operating system. Contention for key CPU resources such as pipelines, cache, and the FPU are avoided and coordination between INtime and Windows is enhanced by using built-in interprocessor communication mechanisms, completely eliminating context switch times. More info

The combination of inexpensive multi-core PC-compatible hardware and TenAsys INtime RTOS technology results in an order of magnitude improvement in quality and bandwidth control for real-time Windows platforms!