| QNX Neutrino Realtime Operating System |
[Vendor: QNX Software Systems, Ltd.]
QNX® Neutrino® Realtime Operating System:
Redefining OS technology for embedded systems
After 20 years of innovation in realtime OS microkernel development, QNX Software Systems introduces the next generation in microkernel design -- QNX Neutrino, a massively scalable, multi-threaded, fault-tolerant realtime OS for multiple platforms.
QNX Neutrino's message-passing architecture forms a software bus that lets you plug in -- or out -- whatever OS modules you need, without rebooting your system. From tiny kernel-only embedded systems to powerful SMP boxes, it can scale any way you want.
Microkernel architecture at its best
The QNX Neutrino microkernel delivers core realtime services for embedded applications, including message passing, POSIX thread services, mutexes, condition variables, semaphores, signals, and scheduling. What's more, it can be smoothly extended to support POSIX message queues, file systems, networking, and other OS-level capabilities with plug-in, service-providing modules.
Powerful kernel for massive scalability
QNX Neutrino's architecture offers unprecedented scalability. Link your application code directly against the kernel to create a single multi-threaded image for small embedded systems -- as you would with a realtime executive. Or run the Process Manager for all the advantages of a full process model and the ability to add thousands of applications -- all running in MMU-protected memory. Or take it to the extreme and run your apps over a distributed network of SMP clusters for the ultimate in large-scale configurations. Whatever your configuration -- tiny, medium, massive, or distributed -- recoding is never an issue since the Neutrino API remains consistent throughout.
Transparent access -- anytime, anywhere
With QNX networking (Qnet™) you can access any resource in your system -- local or remote. Qnet extends the message-based architecture of QNX Neutrino, integrating your entire network into a single, homogeneous set of resources. Even the smallest, memory-constrained device can make full use of another node's file system, servers, hardware resources, and so on.
Qnet provides fault-tolerant networking, load-balancing on the fly, efficient performance, extensible architecture, and transparent distributed processing.
POSIX means portable
QNX Neutrino is the world's first microkernel with a POSIX personality. Unlike realtime executives and OS implementations that have proprietary APIs, QNX Neutrino is engineered from the ground up for the latest POSIX 1003.1 standards and drafts, including realtime and thread options.
QNX Neutrino's POSIX implementation means portability -- not only of your application code, but also of your software developers! In fact, programmers familiar with UNIX or Linux won't need any training to feel right at home in this POSIX environment. What's more, this built-in POSIX compatibility comes without the penalty of extra code. Even after the Process Manager is added to include services like process creation, pathname-space management, and memory protection, a QNX Neutrino-based system is extremely small and efficient -- crucial for ROMable systems. So you can count on better overall performance and reduced memory requirements with less code at the heart of your system -- without sacrificing functionality or performance.
Superior memory protection
Conventional operating systems use a single flat memory architecture where hard-to-detect programming errors like corrupt C pointers can cause programs to overwrite each other (bad) or the kernel (worse). The inevitable result: system failure. A QNX Neutrino-based system, however, can intelligently recover from software faults, even in drivers and other critical programs -- without rebooting -- because every OS component runs in its own MMU-protected address space.
QNX Neutrino's full MMU support also simplifies testing since it identifies which module tried to perform an invalid memory access -- at the exact instruction. What can often take weeks or months to identify in a conventional RTOS takes virtually no time with QNX Neutrino.
Realtime executive architecture provides no protection
Traditional monolithic architecture offers
limited protection to application processes
QNX Neutrino's microkernel architecture provides
full protection of all components
Minimize hardware costs
Unlike some operating systems that try to squeeze monolithic designs or bulky windowing systems into embedded environments, QNX Neutrino was designed from the ground up to reduce the cost and component count of your products. On custom x86 target systems, for example, you can eliminate the expense of a BIOS since QNX Neutrino doesn't rely on BIOS calls.
QNX Neutrino was also designed to keep RAM requirements to an absolute minimum. For instance, it supports execute-in-place (XIP), which allows applications to run directly out of ROM or flash. And, since QNX Neutrino's system image is actually a simple read-only file system, it allows applications to start without a separate file system manager or command interpreter.
A host of functionality and development options
QNX Software Systems has developed an efficient suite of embedding tools and run-time software components to provide every-thing from cross-platform connectivity to a full-featured embeddable windowing system.
Powerful development environment
QNX Neutrino development is supported under the industry-standard GNU toolchain. Depending on your project, you can choose self-hosted QNX Neutrino development or cross-development -- from QNX 4, Windows, Solaris, and Linux workstations. QNX Neutrino also supports the award-winning CodeWarrior Integrated Development Environment for efficient multiplatform development.
Dynamically loadable functionality beyond DLLs
No other realtime OS scales so easily -- just plug in the modules or drivers you need. Like other operating systems, QNX Neutrino supports shared objects (also known as DLLs). But unlike other operating systems, QNX Neutrino lets you add or remove entirely new OS functionality (via software modules) on the fly -- safely and seamlessly -- without rebooting your system.
Extend the functionality of your application with any of the following modules:
Embeddable Photon microGUI® windowing system
Offers a highly functional windowing system for resource-constrained embedded environments. Running in an extremely small memory footprint, Photon delivers sophisticated functionality and connects seamlessly to QNX Neutrino's message-passing architecture.
Photon also gives you exceptional connectivity between windowing systems. With Photon's remote user interface (RUI) technology you can view -- and control -- the GUI of a QNX Neutrino embedded system from a window on a Windows or UNIX desktop. RUIs are baud-rate aware and can run across a serial or network link. For embedded systems, this can give you a graphical interface into your consoleless black box.
With the optional Citrix ICA® client for Photon, reverse connectivity is also available for situations where you need to access a Windows session within a window on the Photon desktop.
Boot Modules
Perform platform- and processor-dependent initialization for embedded systems at startup, releasing occupied memory after initialization. (Boot modules are supplied in full source for custom hardware adaptations.)
Process Manager
Extends QNX Neutrino's services to include support for processes (containing threads), protected memory, and pathname-space management. The pathname space can then be populated by other processes that are visible to application threads.
Network Manager
Coordinates messages between local and remote notes. The network manager module runs network drivers, protocols, and QNX Networking (Qnet).
Embeddable QNX File System Manager
Provides essential services (including hard and soft symbolic links, long filenames, etc.) of a POSIX 1003.1 file system in a low-overhead implementation.
Flash File System Manager
Features wear-leveling, on-the-fly decompression, random writes, fault recovery, and other characteristics unique to implementing a file system in flash memory. In keeping with QNX Neutrino itself, this file system is multithreaded (e.g. background reclaims.)
CD-ROM File System Manager
Implements the ISO 9660/Rock Ridge media standard and allows CD-ROMs and DVDs to be readily used.
CIFS File System Manager
Implements the Microsoft Common Internet File System standard and allows Windows network file access.
Choice of TCP/IP Stacks
QNX Neutrino gives you a choice of TCP/IP stacks. Choose the Tiny TCP Manager, which provides a small implementation of TCP/IP, including ftp, ftpd, telnet, telnetd, and more. Tiny TCP also supports PPP and 802.3 networking.
Or you can use the full BSD 4.4 stack, which adds features such as routing, IP filtering, and multicasting.
Serial Manager
Provides standard POSIX TTY device control while supporting extensions for efficient realtime protocol management.
NFS File System
A popular network file system for enterprise-wide, heterogeneous networking, NFS lets you transparently access files on most UNIX systems and many non-UNIX systems, including Windows.
PCI Device Manager
Provides PCI services for all managers in your system. The PCI Manager makes it possible to transparently access all PCI services.
Device drivers made easy across platforms
From the beginning, drivers for QNX Neutrino were designed to be source-code identical across CPUs and boards. In fact, even the same binaries for a CPU can run on different boards -- no more BSP nightmares sorting out the complexity of custom board- and processor-specific code.
To reduce the time required to write your own device drivers, QNX Neutrino provides a resource manager framework and C functions that handle the default behaviors common to most devices; all you need worry about are the low-level details specific to your device.
And because each QNX Neutrino driver runs as a standard process (rather than as part of the kernel itself), you can test changes in driver code without having to go through the time-consuming task of rebuilding the kernel. Simply recompile and restart the driver on a running system.
Pick the best CPU for the job
With QNX Neutrino, you can choose from a number of leading processors*, including many highly integrated chips that save on space and cost: - x86 -- 386, i386 EX, Am386SE/DE, AMD ÉlanSC400/410, 486, K6, and K7, Cyrix MediaGX, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II, Pentium III
- PowerPC -- 401, 403, 405, 603e, 604, 604e, 740, 750, 7400, 8240, 8260, MPC860, MPC821, MPC823
- MIPS -- R4000, R5000, NEC VR4300/4102/4111, VR5000, R7000, IDT R4700, QED RM5260/5270/5261/5271
QNX Neutrino also supports many buses, including ISA, PCI, CompactPCI, VME, STD, STD 32, and PC/104.
* Visit our web site (www.qnx.com) for a complete, up-to-date list of hardware support.
 |
|
|
FUEL Database on MontaVista Linux
Whether building a mobile handset, a car navigation system, a package tracking device, or a home entertainment console, developers need capable software systems, including an operating system, development tools, and supporting libraries, to gain maximum benefit from their hardware platform and to meet aggressive time-to-market goals.
Breaking New Ground: The Evolution of Linux Clustering
With a platform comprising a complete Linux distribution, enhanced for clustering, and tailored for HPC, Penguin Computing¿s Scyld Software provides the building blocks for organizations from enterprises to workgroups to deploy, manage, and maintain Linux clusters, regardless of their size.
Data Monitoring with NightStar LX
Unlike ordinary debuggers, NightStar LX doesn¿t leave you stranded in the dark. It¿s more than just a debugger, it¿s a whole suite of integrated diagnostic tools designed for time-critical Linux applications to reduce test time, increase productivity and lower costs. You can debug, monitor, analyze and tune with minimal intrusion, so you see real execution behavior. And that¿s positively illuminating.
Virtualizing Service Provider Networks with Vyatta
This paper highlights Vyatta's unique ability to virtualize networking functions using Vyatta's secure routing software in service provider environments.
High Availability Messaging Solution Using AXIGEN, Heartbeat and DRBD
This white paper discusses a high-availability messaging solution relying on the AXIGEN Mail Server, Heartbeat and DRBD. Solution architecture and implementation, as well as benefits of using AXIGEN for this setup are all presented in detail.
Understanding the Financial Benefits of Open Source
Will open source pay off? Open source is becoming standard within enterprises, often because of cost savings. Find out how much of a financial impact it can have on your organization. Get this methodology and calculator now, compliments of JBoss.
Embedded Hardware and OS Technology Empower PC-Based Platforms
The modern embedded computer is the jack of all trades appearing in many forms.
Data Management for Real-Time Distributed Systems
This paper provides an overview of the network-centric computing model, data distribution services, and distributed data management. It then describes how the SkyBoard integration and synchronization service, coupled with an implementation of the OMG¿s Data Distribution Service (DDS) standard, can be used to create an efficient data distribution, storage, and retrieval system.
7 Advantages of D2D Backup
For decades, tape has been the backup medium of choice. But, now, disk-to-disk (D2D) backup is gaining in favor. Learn why you should make the move in this whitepaper.
|
|
|
|
|
news feed