In general, an operating system (OS) is responsible for managing the hardware resources of a computer and hosting applications that run on the computer. An RTOS performs these tasks, but is also specially designed to run applications with very precise timing and a high degree of reliability. This can be especially important in measurement and automation systems where downtime is costly or a program delay could cause a safety hazard.
To be considered “real-time”, an operating system must have a known maximum time for each of the critical operations that it performs (or at least be able to guarantee that maximum most of the time). Some of these operations include OS calls and interrupt handling. Operating systems that can absolutely guarantee a maximum time for these operations are commonly referred to as “hard real-time”, while operating systems that can only guarantee a maximum most of the time are referred to as “soft real-time”. In practice, these strict categories have limited usefulness – each RTOS solution demonstrates unique performance characteristics and the user should carefully investigate these characteristics.
To fully grasp these concepts, it is helpful to consider an example. Imagine that you are designing an airbag system for a new model of car. In this case, a small error in timing (causing the airbag to deploy too early or too late) could be catastrophic and cause injury. Therefore, a hard real-time system is needed; you need assurance as the system designer that no single operation will exceed certain timing constraints. On the other hand, if you were to design a mobile phone that received streaming video, it may be ok to lose a small amount of data occasionally even though on average it is important to keep up with the video stream. For this application, a soft real-time operating system may suffice.
The main point is that, if programmed correctly, an RTOS can guarantee that a program will run with very consistent timing. Real-time operating systems do this by providing programmers with a high degree of control over how tasks are prioritized, and typically also allow checking to make sure that important deadlines are met.
