Some extensive system health monitoring

[John Richard Moser]

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Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 01:05:24PM -0500, John Richard Moser wrote:
> 
> 
>>REAL TIME, i.e. not batch
>>
>>A batch task takes X amount of data and crunches it down until it's done
>>with it; a real-time task has to interact with the user and thus spends
>>more time sleeping and waiting for keyboard/mouse interrupts than
>>actually using CPU.
> 
> 
> In UNIX land, these are "interactive" tasks/processes, and "real-time" means
> something entirely different.
> 

Yeah, interactive, realtime, the concept is basically the same in
computer science.

"Real time" in general means that a task for some reason must complete
within T time, and that it is completed in <=T time.  For example, if
you play back an MP3 that's 3 minutes long, and use <100% CPU to decode
it, then the operation is real time, as the CPU time used is less than 3
minutes.  If however you need >100% CPU, the MP3 skips or lags, and the
operation was not real time.

I'm not sure if non-UI things are considered "interactive" in Unix, but
I know that real-time UI things are called "interactive tasks."  Is
interactiveness a general user interface concept?

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