Well, because while it is true that real time means "deterministic worst case time" it is also
true that real time customers want that worst case time to be as small as possible. This may
mean that a RTOS may have a slower response time than a non-RTOS, but it also means that you
have a guarantee you won't loose "too many milliseconds in the execution of an order" which
you simply can't get from a non-RTOS.
Posted Dec 7, 2007 0:52 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
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it is also
true that real time customers want that worst case time to be as small as possible
I don't think that's particularly true. While it's true that computer users in general want worst case time to be as small as possible, real time people are probably less demanding than non-RT people.
Say you're running an automobile's cruise control. You have to make adjustments every 100 milliseconds. It's essential that your worst case response time be less than 100 milliseconds, but every bit faster than that is just a waste of money.
But in a web server, every bit faster you can serve a page is worth something.