Overview RTOS: RTX64 and RTX

May 26, 2016

IntervalZero’s RTX64 and RTX transform Windows into an RTOS

IntervalZero RTOS Platform Architecture

IntervalZero’s RTX64 and RTX transform Windows into a real-time operating system (RTOS) and RTX64 can scale from 1 to 63 cores for dedicated real-time processing.

Real-time applications running on 64-bit Windows with RTX64 can access 128GB of non-paged memory, depending on actual mapped physical RAM size. By comparison 32-bit Windows 7 has a non-paged memory limitation of 2GB. Overall, 64-bit Windows’ 512GB of physical memory dwarfs the 4GB physical memory limitation in 32-bit Windows.

For complex, connected embedded systems that seek to take advantage of Windows’ world-class HMI and that also require determinism and hard-real time, RTX64 and RTX provide an RTOS that is tightly integrated with Windows. Where Windows provides timers with a maximum resolution – smallest granularity – of 1000 μs (1 millisecond), RTX64/RTX lower this to 1 μs where supported by the hardware.

Notably, RTX64 and RTX extend the Windows operating system’s capabilities – without altering or modifying the Windows Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) – to deliver determinism and hard real- time performance without relying on latency-inherent virtualization approaches or unnecessarily complicated inter-process communications schemes.

RTX64 is a key component of the IntervalZero RTOS Platform that comprises x86 and x64 multicore multiprocessors, Windows, and real-time Ethernet (e.g. EtherCAT or PROFINET) to outperform real-time hardware such as DSPs and radically reduce the development costs for systems that require determinism or hard real-time.