CHIMERA II: A Real-Time UNIX-Compatible Multiprocessor Operating System for Sensor-Based Control Applications.

摘要

This paper describes the CHIMERA II multiprocessing operating system, which has been developed to provide the flexibility, performance, and UNIX-compatible interface needed for fast development and implementation of parallel real-time control code. The operating system is intended for sensor-based control applications such as robotics, process control, and manufacturing. The features of CHIMERA II include support for multiple general purpose CPUs; support for multiple special purpose processors and I/O devices; a high performance real-time multitasking kernel; user redefinable dynamic real-time schedulers; a UNIX-like environment, which supports most standard C system and library calls; standardized interrupt and exception handlers; and a user interface which serves to download, monitor, and debug code on any processor board, and serves as a terminal interface to the executing code. CHIMERA II also offers an attractive set of interprocessor communication features. The system-level express mail facility provides transparent access to a host file system and remote devices, and provides the basis for implementing user-level interprocessor communication. Application programmers have the choice of using shared memory, message passing, remote semaphores, or other special synchronization primitives for communicating between multiple processors. (kr)