What does "Windows is not a real-time operating system" mean?

Posted by hydroparadise on Super User See other posts from Super User or by hydroparadise
Published on 2012-03-30T20:45:46Z Indexed on 2012/03/30 23:33 UTC
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Filed under:

Windows

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operating-systems

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latency

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real-time

I came across an application called LatencyMon, that apparently does latency monitoring. I have always understood the more of a load you put on the processor, the less responsive, or more latent, the system becomes. However, in the second section of the LatencyMon page, the first sentence says, "Windows is not a real-time operating system". That got me thinking. I mean, is this any different from any other operatiing system like linux, unix, or OS X?

Are there any "Real-Time" operating systems? Or is the merely a marketing scheme to get you to buy their product?

EDIT:

Also, are there any examples of RTOS's out there?

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