Real-time extension for Windows NT/CE used for control systems

Windows NT is a major operating system in business area and is said to have real-time capability by supporting the fixed priority scheduling. However, even if the highest system priority is used, real-time capability for applications are not guaranteed. Some vendors have accomplished this problem by modifying the hardware abstraction layer (HAL) and the kernel but this will lose the standardization of Windows NT. In this paper, we propose Real-time PC. Real-time PC is a real-time task scheduler which is implemented as a device driver in Windows NT, and by using Real-time PC, users are able to create real-time tasks that have to be executed periodically on a millisecond base on Windows NT. Real-time PC is also implemented on Windows CE, and the real-time tasks can be executed on either platform.