Re: Is an RTOS Required for Ada?

[Robert Dewar <dewar@gnat.com>]

In article <19990513150314.13727.00000147@ng-cs1.aol.com>,
  tramse@aol.com (Tramse) wrote:
> I have an application in which Ada95 is required.  The target
> microcontroller is the Motorola 68336.  It a real simple
> application, it only needs to read/write to fixed addresses
> (ports/data) and respond to a interupts.  We have
> a real fast boot up requirement and small RAM resource (7.5K)
> and can't afford the boot time and RAM requried for a RTOS.
>
> Can we use Ada and compile direct to 68K code without using an
> RTOS (like we could in C)?

Certainly using GNAT, the answer is yes. You simply restrict
your code so that it does not need RTOS services. The pragma
Restriction capability provides a nice way to control these
kind of restrictions so that the compiler enforces them.

You need not go as far as GNORT to achieve this, there are many
library routines which can be used perfectly fine in the kind
of environment you are envisioning. You will not have tasking
available, but you probably don't need it.

Alternatively, as one customer of ours has done, you can
implement your own tiny real time kernel to support the minimal
amount of services that GNAT requires for implementing a
restricted tasking capability corresponding to the Ravenscar
profile.


Robert Dewar
Ada Core Technologies


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