Previous work has shown that a system-on-a-chip lock cache (SoCLC) reduces on-chip memory traffic, provides a fair and fast lock hand-off, simplifies software, increases the real-time predictability of the system and improves performance. In this research work, we extend the SoCLC mechanism with a priority inheritance support implemented in hardware. Priority inheritance provides a higher level of real-time guarantees for synchronizing application tasks. Experimental results indicate that our SoCLC hardware mechanism with priority inheritance achieves a 36% speedup in lock delay, 88% speedup in lock latency, and 15% speedup in the overall execution time when compared to its software counterpart. The cost in terms of additional hardware area for the SoCLC with priority inheritance is approximately 10000 NAND2 gates.

In this paper, we present a mechanism for runtime updating of all kernel modules of a highly modular dynamic real-time operating system. Our approach can help solve the lack of adaptability, extensibility and flexibility of existing real-time operating systems. The dynamic real-time operating system will efficiently support a wide range of applications since any kernel module can be dynamically loaded at runtime to exactly suit the applications without necessitating a reboot of the system.