¹Software Systems Research Group, NICTA, Sydney, Australia
²School of Computer Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
³School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, Australia

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Abstract—Real-time operating systems (RTOSes) are required to run for years without human intervention, and never fail. Safety is a concern when they control physical equipment. One area of real-time operating system (RTOS) research is looking at the question: can developing an RTOS in a safe language result in a system that an errant process cannot crash? In this paper, we examine the advantages and problems of writing an RTOS in a safe language, namely Java. Then we design, implement and measure the performance of a minimal RTOS to schedule processes as threads on a Sun SPOT micro-controller.

Index Terms—real-time operating system, Java, Sun SPOT, embedded system, safe language, green thread, performance measurement, TINI, kernel overhead

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Cite: Qinghua Lu, Phillip John McKerrow, and Zhi Quan Zhou, "Design and Performance of a Minimal Real-Time Operating System in a Safe Language: Experience with Java on the Sun SPOT," Journal of Software vol. 7, no. 8, pp. 1835-1844, 2012.