ChronOS Real-time Linux

ChronOS is a real-time Linux patch created by the Real-time Systems Lab at Virginia Tech. It builds upon the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT patch and is designed to provide a testbed for real-time and distributed task scheduling and resource management research on multicore platforms.

The current version of ChronOS is Beta 2.8 which is based on Linux kernel 2.6.33.9 and the CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT patch.

Installation Guide

To download ChronOS Linux, please refer to Downloading ChronOS Linux

For installation instructions, please refer to the Installation Guide.

For common installation problems and their solutions, please refer to Common Installation Problems.

Documentation

• For architecture details, please see About ChronOS Linux
• For more information about distributed threads on ChronOS, please see ChronOS Distributed Threads.
• For full documentation of the user-space APIs provided by ChronOS, please look at ChronOS Userspace Docs.
• For kernel programming tips and other related documentation, please look at Kernel Programming Tips

Getting the Code

In addition to the packages made available on our downloads page, the ChronOS source code is available in the form of git repositories, available here.

Publications

• Implementing Distributable Real-Time Threads in the Linux Kernel: Programming Interface and Scheduling Support, S. Fahmy, B. Ravindran, and E. D. Jensen, ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Track on Operating Systems, March 2012, to appear.

• An Experimental Evaluation of the Scalability of Real-Time Scheduling Algorithms on Large-Scale Multicore Platforms, Matthew Dellinger, MS Thesis, April 2011

• ChronOS Linux: A Best-Effort Real-Time Multiprocessor Linux Kernel, Matthew Dellinger, Piyush Garyali, and Binoy Ravindran, ACM Design and Automation Conference (DAC 2011), June 2011, To appear. ©ACM, 2011. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of ACM for your personal use. Not for redistribution.

• On Best-Effort Utility Accrual Real-Time Scheduling on Multiprocessors, Piyush Garyali, Matthew Dellinger, and Binoy Ravindran, International Conference On Principles Of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2010), December 2010

• On Best-Effort Utility Accrual Real-Time Scheduling on Multiprocessors, Piyush Garyali, MS Thesis, July 2010

• Collaborative Scheduling and Synchronization of Distributable Real-Time Threads, Sherif F. Fahmy, PhD Dissertation, May 2010

Past publications on distributed threads and real-time scheduling are available here.

ChronOS News

Latest Development News

• October 28, 2011 - ChronOS Beta 2.8 Released. (Changelog).

Note that if you downloaded this release before November 4th, 2011, there was an error in the libchronos that shipped with the release, and you should re-download it to get the fixed version.

• April 12, 2011 - ChronOS Beta 2.7 Released. (Changelog).
• March 21, 2011 - ChronOS Beta 2.6 Released. (Changelog).
• February 20, 2011 - ChronOS Beta 2.5 Released. (Changelog).
• November 17, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 2.4 Released. (Changelog).
• October 12, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 2.3 Released. (Changelog).
• September 22, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 2.2 Released. (Changelog).
• August 28, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 2.1 Released. (Changelog).
• July 22, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 2 Released.
• April 15, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 1.1 Released.
• March 25, 2010 - ChronOS Beta 1 Released.

Contacts

Faculty Advisor

Binoy Ravindran binoy@vt.edu

Current Maintainer

Matthew Dellinger matthew@mdelling.com

Other Developers

• Aaron Lindsay aaron.lindsay@vt.edu
• Ben Shelton beshelto@vt.edu

Past Contributers

• Jonathan Anderson andersoj@andersoj.org
• Piyush Garyali piyushg@vt.edu (M.S., 2010)
• Sherif Fahmy fahmy@vt.edu (PhD., 2010)
• Caleb Hopkins (B.S., 2009)
• Surry Shome (B.S., 2009)