[etherlab-users] Question on real time (newbie)

[Antonio Del Cinque]

Hi,
I'm really new to the EtherCAT Master, so please forgive if the question is
odd or old.

I am working on the MPC5121e SoC from Freescale (PowerPC e300 Core).
Freescale delivers a Linux BSP, with a 2.6.24.6 kernel and patches including
early SoC device drivers. To enable real time tasks, after considering RTAI
and Xenomai as solutions, I deployed Xenomai, because of better support for
the PowerPC arch. I guess there is no port of the EtherCAT lab to Xenomai,
so maybe I should reconsider RTAI...

Anyway browsing through the sources, I see that the ethercat master module
is using plain calls to Linux services when executing the master state
machine. I don't know RTAI details, but I see it uses a co-kernel approach
for real time, similar to that used in Xenomai, so that, even when master
code is executed in an RTAI task, Linux service calls would prevent real
time to be guaranteed.

Is the ethercat master guaranteed for real time?

Antonio
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