Chapter 13. Real-Time Kernel

The Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time Kernel is designed to enable fine-tuning for systems with extremely high determinism requirements. The major increase in the consistency of results can, and should, be achieved by tuning the standard kernel. The real-time kernel enables gaining a small increase on top of increase achieved by tuning the standard kernel.

The real-time kernel is available in the rhel-7-server-rt-rpms repository. The Installation Guide contains the installation instructions and the rest of the documentation is available at Product Documentation for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Real Time.

The can-dev module has been enabled for the real-time kernel, providing the device interface for Controller Area Network (CAN) device drivers. CAN is a vehicle bus specification originally intended to connect the various micro-controllers in automobiles and has since extended to other areas. CAN is also used in industrial and machine controls where a high performance interface is required and other interfaces such as RS-485 are not sufficient.

The functions exported from the can-dev module are used by CAN device drivers to make the kernel aware of the devices and to allow applications to connect and transfer data.

Enabling CAN in the real-time kernel allows the use of third party CAN drivers and applications to implement CAN-based systems. (BZ#1328607)