Mixed-mode Operating System for Real-time Performance

M.M. Hasan (Dept. of Computer Science, Faculty of Science University Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link Gadong, BE 1410)
S. Sultana (Dept. of Computer Science, Faculty of Science University Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link Gadong, BE 1410)
C.K. Foo (Dept. of Computer Science, Faculty of Science University Brunei Darussalam, Jalan Tungku Link Gadong, BE 1410)

ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development
Vol. 26 No. 1 (2009): ASEAN Journal on Science and Technology for Development (AJSTD)

The purpose of the mixed-mode system research is to handle devices with the accuracy of real-time systems and at the same time, having all the benefits and facilities of a matured Graphic User Interface (GUI) operating system which is typically nonreal-time. This mixed-mode operating system comprising of a real-time portion and a non-real-time portion was studied and implemented to identify the feasibilities and performances in practical applications (in the context of scheduled the real-time events). In this research an i8751 microcontroller-based hardware was used to measure the performance of the system in real-time-only as well as non-real-time-only configurations. The real-time portion is an 486DX-40 IBM PC system running under DOS-based realtime kernel and the non-real-time portion is a Pentium III based system running under Windows NT. It was found that mixed-mode systems performed as good as a typical realtime system and in fact, gave many additional benefits such as simplified/modular programming and load tolerance.