Michael Gonzalez Harbour is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electronics and Computers at the University of Cantabria. He works in software engineering for real- time systems. He is a co-author of "A Practitioner’s Handbook on Real-Time Analysis". He has been involved in several projects using Ada to build real-time controllers for robots.

Michael is an active member of the POSIX real-time working group. He is the Technical Editor of the IEEE POSIX.1d and IEEE POSIX.1j standards. He teaches a graduate-level course on Real-Time Posix at his University and at the Polytechnical University of Madrid, and has given talks and tutorials on this subject at different conferences and workshops.

POSIX is the international standardization of a Unix-like operating system application program interface, with the objective of portability of applications at the source code level. Although initially POSIX was developed for general-purpose computing systems, real-time extensions have been added that make it possible to implement operating systems that can support portability of applications with real-time requirements. Today, most commercial real-time operating systems provide support for the POSIX interfaces.

POSIX is currently developed by two organizations in cooperation: IEEE, a well-known professional association, and X/Open, an industrial consortium. ARTIST2 core partner University of Cantabria has been actively participating in the POSIX real-time Working Group of IEEE for the past 12 years, and is deeply involved in the maintenance of the approved standards, and the development of new extensions, in particular those that will make it possible to have more flexible scheduling policies available to applications.

The ARTIST2 NoE, and particularly the cluster “Adaptive Real-Time”, is a privileged forum for elaborating new extensions for flexible scheduling, adapting them to the needs of embedded real-time applications, and influencing operating system vendors to implement the new services.

An example of this, already organized by ARTIST2 partners, is the Advanced Real-Time Operating System Services workshop (ARTOSS), held in July 2003. ARTIST2 will organize similar events, and the conclusions from the discussions will be submitted by University of Cantabria to the POSIX Working Group.

We have been working on two parts of the standard:

• IEEE Std 1003.13-2003.
  IEEE Standard for Information
  Technology—Standardized Application Environment Profile—
  POSIX Realtime and Embedded Application Support (AEP)

• IEEE Std 1003.26-2003.
  IEEE Stf for Information Technology -
  Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX).
  Part 26: Device Control
  Application Program Interface (API) [C Language]

Expected next Major Release Date
Approximately 2008

Technical Area(s) which it Addresses
Real-time and embedded operating systems

Very Succinct Description of the Standard Itself
POSIX is the standardization of the UNIX operating system at the international level. It describes application program interfaces for the operating system services, with the aim of portability at the source code level. In addition to general-purpose services, it contains optional real-time services.

• IEEE Std 1003.13-2003 defines four profiles (subsets) of the base standard that are appropriate to specific real-time and embedded application environments. The profiles are for small embedded systems, industrial controllers, large embedded systems, and general-purpose computers with real-time requirements.
• IEEE Std 1003.26 is an extension to the base standard defining an API for managing and controlling device drivers from the application.

Technical Gains

• Portability of applications at the source code level
• Programming model shared across platforms of different sizes
• Portability of programmers because of using the same programming model.

Previous revisions/versions on which it is based
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001
IEEE Std 1003.13-1998

Name of the Relevant Standardisation Body
IEEE, ISO/IEC

Main Leader or Contact Person within this Standardisation body, and his/her role
Joseph Gwinn (Raytheon), Chair of the POSIX System Services working Group.

Industrial Domains Impacted
Real-time and embedded operating systems vendors and users.

Industrial Gains
Portability of applications gives technological advantages of being able to support the same product for multiple platforms, and evolve to new software and hardware platforms very easily.

Name of the your Team
Universidad de Cantabria

ARTIST Teams’ Roles and Responsibilities in the Standard Definition
Member of the POSIX Real-Time System Services Working Group
Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.13 Std
Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.26 Std
Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.1j Std
Technical editor of the IEEE 1003.1d Std

Main other ARTIST participants in the standardisation process
Indirect contributions of the partners of the Adaptive Real-Time Action through the group of the University of Cantabria

Main other ARTIST participants in the standardisation process
Very large number of participants (see the list in the actual standards)

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