Xenomai

Xenomai
	File:Xenomai-small.png
Initial release	August 2001
Stable release	2.6.4 / 25 September 2014; 10 years ago
Preview release	3.0-rc7 / 15 August 2015; 9 years ago
Development status	active
Platform	x86, ARM, POWER, IA-64, Blackfin, nios2
Website	www.xenomai.org

Xenomai is a real-time development framework cooperating with the Linux kernel, to provide a pervasive, interface-agnostic, hard real-time support to user space applications, seamlessly integrated into the Linux environment.

The Xenomai project was launched in August 2001. In 2003 it merged with the Real-Time Application Interface (RTAI) project to produce a production-grade real-time free software platform for Linux called RTAI/fusion, on top of Xenomai's abstract real-time operating system (RTOS) core. Eventually, the RTAI/fusion effort became independent from RTAI in 2005 as the Xenomai project.

Xenomai is based on an abstract RTOS core, usable for building any kind of real-time interface, over a nucleus which exports a set of generic RTOS services. Any number of RTOS personalities called “skins” can then be built over the nucleus, providing their own specific interface to the applications, by using the services of a single generic core to implement it.^[1]

Xenomai vs. RTAI

There is actually a long list of differences, though both projects share a few ideas and support the RTDM layer. The major differences derive from the goals the projects aim for, and from their respective implementation. While RTAI is focused on lowest technically feasible latencies, Xenomai also considers clean extensibility (RTOS skins), portability, and maintainability as very important goals. Xenomai's path towards Ingo Molnár's PREEMPT_RT support is another major difference compared to RTAI's objectives.^[2]