Achieving end-to-end predictability in the TAO Real-time CORBA ORB

End-to-end predictability of remote operations is essential for many fixed-priority distributed real-time and embedded (DRE) applications, such as command and control systems, manufacturing process control systems, large-scale distributed interactive simulations, and testbeam data acquisition systems. To enhance predictability, the Real-time CORBA specification defines standard middleware features that allow applications to allocate, schedule, and control key CPU, memory, and networking resources necessary to ensure end-to-end quality of service support. This paper presents the results of empirical studies that illustrate how a Real-time CORBA ORB can provide end-to-end QoS guarantees in middleware. The results in this paper are based on TAO, which is widely-used, open-source, Realtime ORBA-compliant DRE middleware. TAO uses non-multiplexed resources to eliminate sources of unbounded priority inversion.

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