| QNX realtime platform |
[Vendor: QNX Software Systems, Ltd.]
Introducing the QNX® realtime platform, the first integrated, self-hosted, graphical platform for embedded developers.
With the QNX realtime platform, you get everything you need to create reliable, realtime devices - today. The platform includes:- QNX Neutrino® RTOS
- Qnet™ networking
- Photon microGUI® windowing system
- Multimedia/Internet support
- Development environment
QNX is... a solid foundation
Every platform needs a solid foundation. The QNX realtime platform is built on the QNX Neutrino realtime OS, the most advanced RTOS on the market. The QNX Neutrino RTOS enables the design of highly reliable, scalable, and deterministic systems.
reliable architecture
With QNX Neutrino it all comes down to architecture...microkernel architecture, that is. The microkernel includes only a small set of core services within the kernel, including thread services, message passing, mutexes, condition variables, semaphores, signals, and scheduling. The kernel can be extended by dynamically plugging in service-providing processes, such as file systems, networking, POSIX message queues, and device drivers.
Each process runs in its own memory-protected address space, which makes QNX Neutrino inherently reliable. With so little code in the kernel to cause problems, kernel errors are virtually eliminated. And when there is a software fault, even in drivers and other critical programs, a QNX Neutrino-based system can intelligently recover - without rebooting.
Embedded systems developers can also rely on other reliability-enhancing features of microkernel architecture, including support for both software and hardware hotswapping, and the ability to distribute components across a networked environment.
fully scalable
Since only core services are included in the kernel, with optional processes plugged in to add functionality, the result is a modular operating system that's incredibly scalable. QNX Neutrino scales seamlessly from the leanest consumer device right up to the largest distributed SMP systems.
realtime performance
QNX Neutrino, of course, offers superior realtime response. With features like multitasking, threads, priority-driven preemptive scheduling, synchronization, and fast context switching (0.55 µsec on a Pentium III), the RTOS provides the serious realtime performance demanded by today's embedded systems developers.
QNX is... open (in all the right places)
Our OEM customers are in the business of creating products that are reliable, secure, innovative, and legally theirs to sell. At the same time, it's becoming increasingly important to develop "open" technology, making it possible for a wide community of developers to create compatible products - which in turn extends the life cycle and market for OEM products.
At QNX, we're endeavoring to strike a balance between openness and security - by providing a stable platform, free access, open source to much of our technology, and by using industry-standard APIs and tools.
free availability
For the first time, a full-fledged realtime platform will be available absolutely free to anyone who wants to use it for non-commercial purposes. So developers can download, evaluate, and create proofs-of-concept right away, effectively lowering their cost of entry.
With this approach, we're widening the community of developers familiar with QNX - and able to build third-party products for QNX-based systems.
Developers will get a full distribution that features all of our OS components, including the QNX Neutrino microkernel (single-processor and SMP versions), OS modules (file systems, networking, etc.), graphical windowing system, hundreds of utilities and libraries, TCP/IP stacks, and more.
We've also provided our complete self-hosted development environment, including our code-generating application builder and GNU toolchain, with GCC, G++, GDB, and our graphical debugger.
accessible source
Besides making QNX free for non-commercial use, QNX also provides source code for most components - drivers, protocol managers, and so on. Only the kernel and other core portions of the QNX platform remain protected, giving OEMs the benefit of building their systems on secure technology with clear IP ownership.
And, thanks to QNX's modular architecture, it's not necessary to do any kernel coding to extend the system. Most OS-level services exist as processes residing outside the kernel, like applications. So it's relatively easy to extend the system - simply add or change OS components. Only new modules need to be tested, which saves time and eliminates the need for expensive kernel gurus.
open driver architecture
Our open concept extends to driver development. Only low-level components need to be modified, which makes it easier for third-party developers to write drivers for your system. And there's a huge community of developers who can write those drivers - since QNX supports industry-standard APIs.
industry-standard APIs
Unlike realtime OSs with proprietary APIs, QNX is engineered for the latest open standards, like POSIX and Linux. Which means code written to those standards can be easily ported to QNX, and developers familiar with those APIs won't find it difficult to program under QNX.
This open-standards compatibility comes without the penalty of extra code. Even with additional services, such as process creation and memory protection, a QNX-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 center of your system - without sacrificing functionality or performance.
QNX is... well connected
One of our greatest strengths is networking. Our full implementation of the TCP/IP protocol suite and utilities - including PPP, DHCP, NFS, RPC, and SNMP - makes it possible to run a variety of Internet services over a wide choice of networks. Using Ethernet or serial lines, users can connect to the Internet, the company WAN, log in to remote systems, exchange mail, run remote user interfaces, and more. What's more, TCP/IP for QNX can be easily scaled down to a small stack, suitable for tiny client-based systems, or scaled up to a full BSD 4.4 implementation.
Qnet: seamless access
But QNX goes beyond simple networking. QNX Networking (Qnet) is message-based native networking that gives you access to any resource, anywhere. Qnet features fault-tolerant networking, load-balancing on the fly, efficient performance, extensible architecture, and transparent distributed processing.
Qnet simply extends the QNX message-passing mechanism to provide the ultimate in flexibility. Under Qnet, messages are transparently transferred from one node to another, which makes it possible to access and use resources from remote nodes - seamlessly.
Qnet routes messages across the various nodes. From an application's point of view, sending messages to a local or remote server is the same. One node can easily access another node's file system, servers, hardware resources, and so on.
Qnet can also be configured to distribute processing needs across multiple nodes.
QNX is... a graphical environment
The QNX platform is the only realtime platform that features a fully customizable, embeddable windowing system - making it possible to bring professional, high-end graphics to even the smallest, memory-constrained device.
embeddable GUI
The Photon microGUI windowing system is a high-performance graphical environment with an extremely small memory footprint. Its modular design gives developers the freedom to scale up and build feature-rich applications - like multimedia, Internet, and more - into embedded products. The Photon microGUI offers a number of technologies for creating high-end graphics applications, such as offscreen video, direct graphics mode, video overlay support, and 3D. Simply add or remove modules to scale from a tiny embedded system to a full-blown, workstation-class development environment.
easy maintenance
Since Photon was created with the same distributed architecture as the underlying RTOS, connectivity is built in. It makes little difference if customers are in the same city or on the other side of the world, developers can monitor and support them with ease. In fact, they can view and interact with any Photon application at any time - anywhere - using TCP/IP as the transport.
Internet ready
Whether a product needs to surf the web or serve HTML pages, QNX's leading-edge Internet technologies have everything developers need. If developers need a web browser, but don't want to spend the time or money to build one from scratch, there's Voyager™ browser. Full-featured and scalable, the Voyager browser has support for SSL-128, as well as optional plug-ins and helpers, such as Macromedia Flash 4, RealNetworks RealPlayer 7, our own media player for MPEG, and general sound support.
multimedia ready
The QNX realtime platform includes all the necessary plug-ins to create the most complete and dynamic multimedia experience possible. The suite includes plug-ins for DVD with Dolby Digital AC-3, MP3, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, CD audio, and more.
Not only does the QNX platform feature an extensive suite of plug-ins, their capabilities are often enhanced when used with QNX. For example, processor-intensive, multithreaded applications such as DVD can deliver smoother, more seamless playback, thanks to QNX's fast context switching, priority-based scheduling, and other realtime capabilities.
QNX is... developer friendly
The QNX realtime platform is the ideal environment for developing realtime, embedded applications.
the best tools
To begin with, the QNX platform includes the tools developers need to create high-quality, realtime, embedded systems. The popular command-line GNU development tools are included with the platform, as are graphical debuggers and third-party development tools. And, of course, since QNX Neutrino and Linux share the same POSIX APIs, almost any Linux development tool can be easily ported to and used with QNX.
Developers creating Photon applications can dramatically reduce the amount of programming that needs to be done with the Photon Application Builder (PhAB™). The PhAB visual design tool generates underlying C code to implement an entire user interface. PhAB saves time not only in writing the interface portion of an application, but in the debugging and testing stages as well. The end result? Full control over the user experience and shorter time to market.
With PhAB, standard widgets can be cut and pasted into an interface, or they can be quickly created with the widget palette. Built-in resource editors can be used to change text fonts, modify colors, customize bitmaps, and add callbacks without writing a single line of code.
choice of development environments
Unlike traditional RTOSs, the QNX realtime platform offers a friendly, graphical development environment. So, whether developers choose self-hosted development or cross-development, the QNX realtime platform offers an environment that's easy to work in.
developer-friendly architecture
The same UPM™ architecture that gives QNX Neutrino such unmatched fault tolerance, also makes it easier to add or change modules during development. Since every module runs as an independent process, it's no problem to add new features or enhance existing ones. Only the modules that are changed need to be re-tested, while the kernel and other modules remain separate and secure. So, rather than the days it may take to recompile, relink, and retest an entire runtime image with other OSs, with QNX Neutrino it takes just seconds. Developers can also start, stop, modify, or upgrade any part of the system safely and seamlessly, without a reboot or kernel rebuild.
In a conventional OS, subtle programming errors can crash the system without leaving a trace. With its full memory protection, however, QNX Neutrino not only prevents memory-access violations, but identifies which module was responsible - at the exact instruction.
custom look-and-feel
With QNX, OEMs have the freedom to brand their products with a unique look-and-feel. Applications can be easily customized using the PhAB design tool and our time-to-market source kits.
runtime friendly
With ever-changing standards, developers need to be able to dynamically upgrade and maintain products in the field. With QNX, they can upgrade new features or fix problems on the fly, even remotely, without interrupting service. For example, users can download new software or replace existing software themselves. Or the device could be programmed to update itself without the user being involved at all. Either way, there's no downtime.
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