Chronolytics Inc. is a real-time technology company which develops and sells products that make things work in the real-world.

Introduction

Chronolytics Inc. was formed in 2003 to make real-time applications run on embedded Linux. The Chronolytics strategy is to produce several layers of software to allow scalable real-time applications to be built quickly and with high quality. The first component, Chronolinux, is a real-time Linux kernel based on the Ingo Molnar (Red Hat) preemption with priority inheritance patches for Linux 2.6. Layered with this is NPTL (Next-gen POSIX Thread Library) and GCC 3.3.x. The two components allow scalable pthreads and compiler-aware thread local storage as well as utilize the Linux 2.6 Futex (Fast User muTEX) mechanism. We also supply debug/testing facilities such as our own lock-free kernel event tracing software as part of the integrated Chronolinux system.

The next layer is the is an industrial strength reactive task middle-ware layer we call Chronolytix. Chronolytix user-space APIs are designed for the rapid construction of high quality real-time systems. A white paper which describes the Chronolytix layer and the software design philosophy is available at Chronolytics Intro . The Chronolytix API is available online as Man Pages .

Reactive Tasking

Reactive Tasking is used in large proprietary real-time systems because in has the potential to scale well, in particular for load balancing across SMP. Chronolytix is based on opaque object components, which are (almost) all dynamically loaded at run-time - including major portions of the Chronolytix core. This "plug-in" architecture is designed so that API components can be replaced/updated with minimum disruption. Reactive Tasking utilizes the schedulability mathematics of Rate Monotonic Theory so that the Chronolytix user can "know" prior to system integration whether a system will make real-time deadlines.

Scalable Embedded Real-Time

With the advent of embeddable SMP, either through multi-core CPUs or VIA dp-310 nano-ITX, the embedded Linux market will need a scalable "standard" API for embedded applications. There is nothing about the Chronolytix system that would prevent its being supported on MontaVista or TimeSys real-time Linux products. FSMLabs' RTLinux is not scalable and is not suitable for large real-time systems.

Roadmap

The next step to Chronolytix is to build many more API classes for processing video, audio, packet streams, CAN control. Firewire control, servo modules, A/D and D/A and digital I/O, etc. A non-zero percentage of our revenue will continue to be made with consulting services. The introduction of bundled embedded controllers is a possible additional revenue stream. The Chronolytics layered offering will represent a significant time-to-market advantage to our customers over "roll-your-own" solutions.