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Thinking open source?

Open source software has become an unavoidable part of the embedded landscape. It promises software free for the taking. Just download it off the web, or use the free distribution from your microprocessor supplier. No costs, no worries. As an RTOS company, we are in the business of selling proprietary commercial software, but we certainly acknowledge that open source can have its place. But we also know it is not right for every situation. There are many factors to consider when deciding between open source and a commercial real-time operating system.

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Speed Development and Improve the Reliability of Your Data Management

Have you considered moving from homegrown data management code to a proven, off-the-shelf database system? When you need to roll out reliable embedded software quickly, it is hard to beat the advantages of commercial database software in reducing time-to-market and improving system reliability. Quadros Systems has partnered with McObject to provide an “in memory” database solution that is consistent with the attributes of the RTXC Quadros real-time operating system: small, extremely fast, and highly efficient.

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Connect your embedded system to a PC with USB

A popular use for USB in an embedded system is to allow a PC to read log files or similar data stored on the resident flash memory in the embedded system. This is useful for allowing occasional access by technicians (since RS-232/DB9 connectors have disappeared from laptops) or it can be a routine way of transferring log data to a PC for analysis. Designing your embedded system to allow a PC to read resident flash memory requires the correct components and interface code so that they work seamlessly together.

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Moving Up to a 32-bit Processor

Many development projects are moving from 8- and 16-bit architectures to a new generation of low-cost 32-bit platforms. Development teams making the move to 32-bit often benefit from using a commercial, real-time operating system. This detailed presentation walks the developer through the RTOS selection process including code migration, various RTOS models, and purchase considerations.

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Introduction to Real-time Operating Systems

Written for developers who are new to commercial, real-time operating systems, this white paper provides an excellent overview of the principles and structures of a real-time operating system. Covers topics such as deterministic performance, hard and soft real time, preemption, multitasking, scheduling models and latency. Defines common terminology.

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Software Requirements for New-Generation Convergent Processing Architectures

Tom Barrett provides a detailed look at the architecture of RTXC/dm, the first RTOS designed for convergent processing -- efficiently handling both DSP/dataflow operations and control processing on a single-core processor.

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An Operating System Designed for Convergent Processing

Stephen Martin, Director of Marketing notes the emergence of a new generation of processors that integrate control and data plane processing into single-core products. What impact do these new hardware architectures have on the real-time operating system? (Published in the Q3 edition of IQ Magazine)

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Strategies for Minimizing Context Switch Times

Bill Dittmann, Chief Engineer at Quadros Systems reviews the basic context switch problem, and discusses methods and strategies that can be used by a real-time operating system (RTOS) to minimize average context switch times in processor environments with large register sets (Presented at the Embedded Systems Developers Conference, August 2004).

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Future Applications Favor a New Generation of Scalable RTOSs

Tom Barrett discusses the emergence of convergent processing and the need for a next-generation RTOS that can deliver the design flexibility and scalability required by these new systems. (from the September issue of RTC Magazine).

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