Priority: Realtime

[Stewbond]

I'm developing an application which is supposed to run in real-time on a dedicated cabinet of machines.

I'm having trouble actually meeting realtime as the execution time is occasionally longer than the allotted iteration period. I've been trying to ween the code, but then I noticed the "real-time" priority for processes. Is this something that I can use to my advantage? What is it?

When I run it on a test-bench with VMWare simulating other machines in the cabinet, the communication gets completely lost, so it's not something that I can use in this environment, but I'm curious if it'll make a difference in the full enviornment.

I'm using Windows Server 2003 if that makes a difference.

[z05DSL3A]

If I remember correctly, the "real-time" priority for processes is the highest priority that a process can have. If your execution is being pre-empted by other process's, then this may help but may have a detrimental effect (I have a feeling that timer interrupts are ignored while this process is active).

You might want to look at Multimedia Class Scheduler Service
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms684247(VS.85).aspx

and this may be of interest also
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/b/3/5b38800c-ba6e-4023-9078-6e9ce2383e65/C06X1116607.pdf