Real-time Linux on RISC-V

Overview

Status: Available

• Type: Semester Thesis or Master Thesis
• Professor: Prof. Dr. L. Benini
• Supervisors:
  • Robert Balas: balasr@iis.ee.ethz.ch
  • Alessandro Ottaviano: aottaviano@iis.ee.ethz.ch

Introduction

Linux[1] is a monolithic, modular, Unix-like, open-source general-purpose kernel running on servers, workstations, mobile devices and embedded systems.

Currently, mainline Linux is not suitable for real-time workloads which require a deterministic and predictable behavior. Many design decision rather focus on throughput. There have been various approaches trying to address problem such as RTLinux[4], Xenomai[5] and PREEMPT_RT [2]. This work will focus on PREEMPT_RT.

PREEMPT_RT is a set of patches for Linux to turn into a kernel that is more suitable for real-time applications. These changes try to minimize the amount of kernel code that is non-preemptible which translates directly into a more reactive system.

Cheshire

Project

The goal of this project is to port PREEMPT_RT Linux to run on 64-bit RISC-V Linux.

• a
• b
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cyclitest

Character

• 15% Literature / architecture review
• 65% C programming
• 20% Evaluation

Prerequisites

• Experience with digital design in SystemVerilog as taught in VLSI I
• Basic knowledge of operating systems
• Knowledge of C programming language and UNIX tooling as from previous bachelor/master courses

References

[1] https://www.kernel.org/ [2] https://wiki.linuxfoundation.org/realtime/start [3] https://lwn.net/Articles/146861/ [4] https://www.yodaiken.com/papers/rtlmanifesto.pdf [5] https://source.denx.de/Xenomai/xenomai/-/wikis/home