Orbit Performance Questions

[anil kumar <anilk cdotd ernet in>]

hello All,

  I am new to ORBIT and CORBA,  right now i am looking at the 
  performance of ORBIT  so that i can use it for  Real Time
  Software Development.We are also planning to  put 
  ORB code into Linux Kernel also if some performance issues 
  come(So we need Open Source ORB ).Some ORB i have found 
  from  Internet are ORBIT,MICO,TAO.

       I have some  basic doubt how   communication takes 
  place when the client and server both are running on the same 
  machine.
 
 a:  Whether the  data is converted  to the XDR format or not?
 b:  What IPC mechanism ORBIT uses for communication?
 c:  How Communication takes place when the Client  and Server
     both are running on different machine?
 d:  Is Corba suited for Real Time Application or not?

     I am also interested in orbit source code so that 
  if  some performance bottleneck is found then  optimisation 
  of code can be done. So , please let me know from which point i 
  should start  reading code. 
    If anyone of  you have some ORBs performance document then
    please  send me the URL.

regards 
 anil