S.Ha.R.K. is a completely configurable kernel architecture designed for supporting hard, soft, and non real-time

Real-time computing

In computer science, real-time computing , or reactive computing, is the study of hardware and software systems that are subject to a "real-time constraint"— e.g. operational deadlines from event to system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within strict time constraints...

 applications with interchangeable scheduling algorithms.

Main features

The major benefit of the proposed kernel architecture is that an application can be developed independently from a particular system configuration, so that new modules can be added or replaced in the same application, to evaluate the effects of specific scheduling policies in terms of predictability, overhead, and performance.

Applications

It has been developed at RETIS Lab, a research facility of the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

The Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa is a special-statute public university located in Pisa, Italy, operating in the field of applied sciences....

, and at the University of Pavia

University of Pavia

The University of Pavia is a university located in Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. It was founded in 1361 and is organized in 9 Faculties.-History:...

 as a tool for teaching, testing, and developing real-time software solutions. It is used, for teaching purposes, in many universities (like Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies

The Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies of Pisa is a special-statute public university located in Pisa, Italy, operating in the field of applied sciences....

 and Malardalens University-Sweden)

Modularity

The kernel is fully modular in terms of scheduling policies, aperiodic servers, and concurrency control protocols, which typically are not modular in traditional operating systems. Modularity is achieved by partitioning the system activities between a generic kernel and a set of modules, which can be registered at initialization time to configure the kernel according to specific application requirements.

History

S.Ha.R.K. is the evolution of the Hartik Kernel and it is based on the OSLib Project.