Real-Time Operating Systems
- Alpha
Kernel (Carnegie
Mellon University) Group
Members
- C Executive
and PSX (JMI
Software Systems)
C EXECUTIVE is a operating system kernel for embedded
applications - providing a small, efficient, real-time
software environment for programs written in C. C
EXECUTIVE, as small as 5 KB in ROM space, is available on
8-, 16- and 32-bit CISC and RISC processors, providing
the foundation for a common, corporate-wide, portable
software strategy. PSX provides a single-user,
single-group, subset of POSIX.1, with up to 32,000
preconfigured processes. PSX adds a substantial subset of
the POSIX.1 system calls to the basic C EXECUTIVE kernel.
Using these calls allows applications to migrate from
POSIX-conformant UNIX platforms to board-level systems,
or vice versa.
- Chimera
(Carnegie Mellon
University)
The Advanced Manipulators Laboratory, at Carnegie Mellon
University, has developed the Chimera Real-Time Operating
System, a next generation multiprocessor real-time
operating system (RTOS) designed especially to support
the development of dynamically reconfigurable software
for robotic and automation systems. Version 3.0 and later
of the software is already being used by several
institutions outside of Carnegie Mellon, including
university, government, and industrial research labs.
- Harmony
(National Research Council
of Canada)
Harmony is a multitasking, multiprocessing operating
system for realtime control, developed at the National
Research Council to serve a need for a flexible system
for realtime control of robotics experiments and for
other applications of embedded systems where predictable
temporal performance is a requirement. Harmony is
extensible, configurable and portable, both across
different target computers (typically assembled from
single-board computers), and across different development
hosts.
- Helios
(Perihelion
Distributed Software)
Helios is a micro kernel operating system for embedded
and multiprocessor systems. The operating system is
modular in design and can scale from an embedded runtime
executive up to a fully distributed operating system.
- ITRON
ITRON (industrial TRON) is a real-time operating system
specification for embedded systems. Many products have
been developed based on the ITRON specifications. ITRON
is a de-fact standard operating system specification in
Japan for consumer applications.
- KeyKOS
KeyKOS is an operating environment for S/370 computers
which provides a high level of security, reliability,
performance, and productivity. It allows emulation of
other environnzens such as VM, MVS, and POSIX.
Development of KeyKOS ceased in 1990. Many of the ideas
of this system have been carried forward into EROS
- Lynx (Lynx Real-time
Systems)
LynxOS is a proprietary UNIX-like real-time operating
system. LynxOS looks and feels like UNIX from the
user/programmer point of view. It was developed from the
ground-up with high performance, deterministic hard
real-time response in mind. Although LynxOS is conformant
with POSIX 1003.1 it is not derived from any
AT&T/USL/Novell source code. The OS is in effect a
complete re-implementation of UNIX from a real-time
perspective.
- Maruti
(University of Maryland)
Group
Members
Maruti is a time-based operating system research project
at the University of Maryland. With Maruti 3.0, we are
entering a new phase of our project. We have an operating
system suitable for field use by a wider range of users,
and we are embarking on the integration of our
time-based, hard real-time technology with industry
standards and more traditional event-based soft- and
non-real-time systems.
- MTOS
- OS9 (Microware
Systems Corporation)
OS-9 is a real-time, multiuser, multitasking operating
system developed by Microware Systems Corporation. It is
modular, allowing new devices to be added to the system
simply by writing new device drivers, ]or if a similar
device already exists, by simply creating a new device
descriptor. All I/O devices can be treated as files,
which unifies the I/O system. In addition, the kernel and
all user programs are ROMable.
- OSE
OSE is a full-featured family of high quality, reliable
and high performance real-time operating systems from
Enea OSE Systems, Sweeden. There is an OSE kernel for
every need, from OSE Basic (for Z80, i8051 and others) up
to OSE Delta (for M68k, PPC and others). OSE Delta is
also the first RTOS to be certified according to the
software quality standard IEC 1508. OSE Delta supports
runtime configuation, runtime program loading, multi-CPU
systems and TCP/IP.
- QNX
A micro-kernel, distributed, real-time, fault-tolerant,
POSIX-certified OS for the x86. QNX adopts the approach
of implementing an OS with a 10 Kbyte micro-kernel
surrounded by a team of optional processes that provide
higher-level OS services. QNX is fully distributed, with
all system interfaces network transparent. QNX has
successfully been used in tiny ROM-based embedded systems
and in several-hundred node distributed systems.
- Roadrunner
In traditional operating systems, input/output (I/O)
subsystems implement a push-pull environment that
provides system calls to allow user applications to pull
data from or push data to a device. An important set of
applications make combined use of push-pull to implement
simple streaming, i. e. data is moved from one device to
another with no transformations. Using push-pull I/O to
implement these applications does not provide maximum
performance. This work proposes a kernel design optimized
for simple streaming applications. The Roadrunner
operating system is being developed specifically to
implement multiple, concurrent, high-speed speed data
streams with Quality-of-Service (QOS) parameters.
- Real-Time
Mach Project (Carnegie
Mellon University) Group
Members
Related to: Mach
Real-Time Mach is a research prototype real-time
operating system intended for use as a vehicle for doing
real-time systems research. The system is being developed
by the ART Project in the School of Computer Science,
Carnegie Mellon University.
- RTEMS
(Redstone
Military Arsenal)
RTEMS is a real-time operating system for embedded
computer systems with the following features:
- support for homogeneous and heterogeneous
multiprocessor systems
- event-driven, priority-based, preemptive
scheduling
- optional rate monotonic scheduling
- intertask communication and synchronization
- responsive interrupt management
- dynamic memory allocation
- RTMX O/S
Group Members: RTMX Incorporated
RTMX is a commercial, BSD 4.4-derived, real-time system
that offers POSIX 1003.4 real-time programming support
with user tunability along with the standard UNIX
functionality of BSD networking, X windows, and a full C
development environment.
- RTX
Group Members: Mike
Podanoffsky
RTX is a very small, very fast real time executive that
utilizes signals and queuing as a basis for managing and
scheduling tasks. It becomes very easy to support
multiple processors, communication channels, and to
synchronize processes. RTX is completely free, but it is
not public-domain software. If you decide to use the
software, you may receive an automatic license to do so
even in commercial products, if you provide adequate,
reasonable credit to its developer.
- Spring Real-Time
Project (University
of Massachsetts, Amherst) Group
Members
The Spring kernel has been designed and implemented to
support/provide predictability, on-line dynamic
guarantees, atomic guarantees, end-to-end scheduling and
resource reservations. It utilizes a micro-kernel design
for multiprocessor architectures and provides an
interface to remote processes, support for distributed
shared memory, and predictable low level communication.
The kernel exists as a component of Spring's integrated
environment. This environment extracts significant
semantic information and this information is used at
runtime to support flexibility. (ed: This is not the
same as the Spring OS from Sun, which unfortunately has
the same name.)
- Sumo
(Lancaster
University)
Related to: Chorus
Over the past few years members of the SUMO team have
been designing and implementing a microkernel based
system with facilities to support distributed real-time
and multimedia applications and ODP based multimedia
distributed application platforms. We are interested in
both communications and processing support for
distributed real-time/ multimedia applications in end
systems, and believe that such applications require
thread-to-thread real-time support according to user
supplied quality of service (QoS) parameters.
- VxWorks (Wind River Systems)
VxWorks(R) is the premier development and execution
environment for complex real-time and embedded
applications on a wide variety of target processors.
Three highly integrated components are included with
VxWorks: a high performance scalable real-time operating
system which executes on a target processor; a set of
powerful cross-development tools which are used on a host
development system; and a full range of communications
software options such as Ethernet or serial line for the
target connection to the host.
Embedded and Real-Time Systems on the Internet
Real-Time Operating Systems and Embedded Kernels
Other Multitasking Operating Systems In Real-Time
Applications
DOS and Windows multitaskers / others
- Commercial
- Free-/Shareware
Real-Time Languages
(please suggest more
sites).
Some companies selling real-time software
Research groups
Other embedded systems overview pages and resources
Software Quality, Fault-Tolerant And Safety-Critical
Computing (misc.)
Papers and Proceedings
Microcontrollers
Check out the Microcontroller
FAQ.
Online Chip Data Sheets and Faxback Services