All XGC compilers are designed for hard real-time applications and offer a small run-time footprint and fast response to real-time events. The default profile offers a wide range of real-time features that will be suitable for most applications. For more critical applications, XGC Ada compiler supports the Ravenscar profile. This places further restrictions on which Ada language features are acceptable to the Ada compiler.

The XGC run-time system runs on the bare target computer. It is therefore much more efficient and deterministic than others that run on top of an operating system. Even real-time operating systems designed for embedded applications cannot match the performance of an Ada run-time when running Ada tasks and handling interrupts.