RadiSys Corp, the Beaverton, Oregon firm that took Intel Corp’s unwanted iRMX real-time operating system off its hands this time last year (CI No 2,838), has joined the movement to add realtime extensions to Windows NT, but it has a head start over its rivals, because instead of starting from scratch, it has pulled the […]
RadiSys Corp, the Beaverton, Oregon firm that took Intel Corp’s unwanted iRMX real-time operating system off its hands this time last year (CI No 2,838), has joined the movement to add realtime extensions to Windows NT, but it has a head start over its rivals, because instead of starting from scratch, it has pulled the bits it needs out of iRMX, which of course was written for the iAPX-86 family, and dates right back to the 8086. The company says INtime is being chosen for applications such as robotics, motion control, personal computer-based process control and telecommunications by customers around the world. Microsoft has given RadiSys source code rights to the Windows NT Hardware Abstraction Layer and RadiSys says it has added real-time capabilities to Windows NT with a few well-defined interfaces that will greatly simplify compatibility with future releases of Windows NT. INtime is designed to provide protected dedicated real-time execution and maximum robustness for critical applications and effectively provides a concurrent executive to NT, since the company claims that it will still deliver rock- solid performance of critical real-time tasks even in the event of a total Windows NT crash. The INtime developer uses the standard Windows NT development environment, including Visual C/C++ Developer Studio and its integrated debugger, with full access to the Win32 programming interfaces for non-real-time processes. INtime requires Windows machine with a Pentium or Pentium Pro processor and Windows NT version 4.0. The development license lists for $9,900 and run-time license charges are volume-based: the unit price for 500 copies is $175. INtime will be ready for beta testing later this month, and the full production release is scheduled for June.