Mission Critical Real-Time Linux

When service providers buzz about using real-time Linux as a platform for time-sensitive, mission-critical applications, they're not so much touting reducing the latency of computational response times-although that is still important-but rather gaining a greater performance consistency, referred to as "determinism."

In mission-critical environments, consistency is more important than speed, says Brian Stevens, CTO of Red Hat, one of the big players in developing the real-time Linux initiative.