WP1 - RTOS State of the Art Analysis: Deliverable D1.1 - RTOS Analysis
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Realtime Signals

POSIX extended the signals generation and delivery to improve the realtime capabilities. Signals take an important role in realtime as the way to inform the processes of the occurrence of asynchronous events like high-resolution timer expiration, fast inter-process message arrival, asynchronous I/O completion and explicit signal delivery.

The main characteristics of this type of signals are:

The range of realtime signals supported by Linux is form 32 (SIGRTMIN) to 63 (SIGRTMAX).
Signals can deliver a small piece of data (an integer or a pointer) to the signal handler (signal-catching function).
Signals that carry information are delivered in chronological FIFO order.
It is possible to automatically create a thread in response to a signal.

Linux fully supports the POSIX realtime signals standard.

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