Abstract:
Porting MidART onto NT

Our MidART project addresses the problem of middleware design to support high speed network based distributed real-time applications. The applications we are dealing with are those in which humans need to interact (e.g., control and monitoring) with instruments and devices in a networked environment through computer-based interfaces. Examples of such applications include distributed industrial plant control systems, multi-machine surgical simulation systems, virtual labs, and large telescope control systems. The end-to-end delay requirements for these applications range from one or two milliseconds to hundreds of milliseconds.

Our middleware provides a set of real-time application specific but network transparent programming abstractions that support individual application QoS requirements. The focus of our middleware is to support the end-to-end application real-time data transfer requirements with a set of easy-to-use programming interfaces. The services provided by MidART include real-time channel-based reflective memory (see [1]) and selective channels (see [2]). Our initial prototype was constructed on PC running QNX real-time operating system over ATM networks. Currently the project has evolved to implement the middleware on Windows NT as well as Unix platforms with Fast Ethernet. We are faced with many challenges, mostly in the realm of how to achieve real-time or soft real-time properties using NT.

[1] Chia Shen, Ichiro Mizunuma, "RT-CRM: Real-Time Channel-based Reflective Memory", In the proceedings of IEEE Third Real-Time Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS'97), June 9-11, 1997. Montreal, Canada.

[2] Ichiro Mizunuma, Chia Shen, Morikazu Takegaki, "Middleware for Distributed Industrial Real-Time Systems on ATM Networks", in Proceedings of the 17^th IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, Washington, DC 1996.

Chia Shen
email: shen@merl.com
Tel: (617)-621-7528
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