The Linux Foundation announced the new Real-Time Linux (RTL) Collaborative Project, which sees Altera, ARM, Google, Intel, IBM, National Instruments, OSADL, Texas Instruments, and others working together to work on technologies for industries including robotics, telecom, manufacturing, aviation, and medical, among others.

The foundation says the RTL kernel supports the largest range of architectures of any operating system and can leverage Linux device drivers, file systems, etc. from the mainline kernel. Thanks to its real-time properties, robots can be controlled by RTL applications, as can data acquisition systems, manufacturing plants and other things that are time-sensitive.

“The work we’ve been doing on Real-Time Linux has been critical in advancing complex real-time computing systems. But technology is moving fast, and the RTL project, with support from across the industry, will allow us to sustain this work and successfully integrate with the mainline kernel for long-term support of these technologies,” said Thomas Gleixner, Linux kernel developer and Linux Foundation Fellow.

“Code that is built and maintained collaboratively is better and less expensive than software that is not,” said Jim Zemlin, executive director at The Linux Foundation. “By coming together to advance Real-Time Linux as a community, products and systems will be supported by the best developers in the world for years to come.”

Google is a founding Platinum member. National Instruments, OSADL, and Texas Instruments are Gold members. Altera, ARM, Intel, and IBM are Silver.

More on the project here.

Image via Linux Foundation