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The embedded operating system has a long history, various categories, and wide applications, including embedded real-time multi-task operating systems (RTOS), open-source Linux, robot and router operating systems, as well as new IoT operating systems and edge computing operating system platforms. The author believes that as long as it is an open-source project developed by Chinese people and maintained by Chinese people, it is broadly defined as a “domestic embedded operating system.” With the rapid development of China’s IoT industry and the strong demand for domestically produced equipment to be independently controllable, the development of domestic embedded operating systems has entered the fast lane.
1. Domestic IoT Operating Systems are Quite Influential
The name of Ruisaide Electronic Technology Company may not be very familiar to everyone, but their product RT-Thread is a very excellent open-source software in the minds of IoT and embedded developers. RT-Thread is currently the most cooperative and supportive domestic IoT operating system with numerous chip and manufacturer collaborations, enthusiastic community developers, rich components, and wide application fields. Before 2017, RT-Thread was still a traditional embedded operating system. After two years of development, RT-Thread has made significant progress in shortening product development cycles, accelerating the connection between edge and cloud, and improving the quality of software on devices.
Huawei LiteOS is another influential embedded operating system in the IoT field. Today, Huawei’s wearable products, such as Huawei Watch GT, which have become well-known, began using LiteOS in 2015. The ultra-low power consumption and ultra-small size requirements provided LiteOS with an opportunity for mature development. By 2017, it officially launched the open-source IoT operating system, and LiteOS has quickly gained a foothold in the NB-IoT market, especially in OPEN CPU’s NB-IOT chip and module solutions. At the HDC 2019 conference, LiteOS was also one of the kernels in the current architecture of Harmony OS (Linux, Harmony, and LiteOS). With the advent of Harmony, the future of LiteOS remains a mystery, but its unique qualities for IoT devices will surely be integrated into Huawei’s operating system layout.
2. Open-source Embedded Operating Systems Facilitate Innovative Development
Zephyr is an open-source real-time operating system platform project initiated by Intel, Synopsys, NXP, and other companies in 2016, and is now managed by the Linux Foundation. The project aims to unite industry leaders to build an extensible embedded real-time operating system for resource-constrained devices. Although Zephyr has a relatively short history, it has a high starting point, summarizing the lessons learned from the founding companies and organizations over the years. The original code came from Wind River, whose VxWorks RTOS is highly influential in industrial and aerospace fields. Although Zephyr has only three years of history, it is relatively complete compared to other open-source RTOS like FreeRTOS and Contiki, with rich middleware. In terms of security design, Zephyr has meticulous considerations; in code specifications, Zephyr uses MISRA C; in functional safety certification, Zephyr chooses IEC61508, which is not achievable by other projects in the open-source embedded operating system space. Zephyr has a vibrant international development community, and compared to IoT operating systems like ARM Mbed OS, NuttX, and RIOT, it is highly active. Although Zephyr is currently less focused on in China, its technological product development ideas are worth learning from domestic peers.
3. Independent Control and Safety First
An important direction for the development of domestic embedded operating systems is to create independently controllable operating systems for aerospace, industrial equipment, rail transit, communication devices, and automotive electronics. Embedded operating systems aimed at equipment and national defense systems have their own requirements for reliability, environmental adaptability, electromagnetic compatibility, and real-time control. Huawei started early in the field of embedded operating systems and currently has a high-reliability, high-security, and high-real-time operating system based on open-source Linux that covers various services in the company’s communication products. Huawei’s RTOS is particularly focused on security considerations for the IoT era of 5G and meets the requirements for secure, reliable, and independent embedded real-time operating systems.
Reworks Cert, a high-security embedded operating system developed by Shanghai Huayuan Chuangxin, complies with functional safety standards IEC 61508 SIL/SC3 (general) and EN 50128 SW SIL4 (rail transit). It is one of the few embedded real-time operating systems in China that has been certified by an international third-party certification company. Currently, Reworks Cert has been successfully applied to the safety computing platform of the leading company in rail transit signaling, Casco Signal Co., Ltd., which has successfully passed EN 50126 SIL4 certification. Reworks Cert is expected to achieve large-scale applications in urban rail transit.
4. Technological Development, Standards Leading
The development of embedded operating systems cannot be separated from the formulation of relevant national standards. The IoT Center of the China Electronic Technology Standardization Institute is currently conducting preliminary research on the national standard system for IoT operating systems. The application fields of IoT operating systems are quite extensive, including smart cities, smart homes, transportation, smart grids, and other scenarios. The formulation of IoT operating system standards requires support and assistance from the industry and academia to contribute to the standardization of the IoT ecosystem. The formulation of IoT operating system standards will be more important for the construction of the IoT industry ecosystem, and we hope the government will introduce policies to promote the healthy and positive development of IoT operating systems.
5. New Trends in Embedded Operating System Development
IoT security requires embedded operating systems to undergo security certification, such as medical electronics IEC 60601/62304, automotive electronics ISO 26262, aerospace DO-178B/C, and nuclear power IEC 61513. Established embedded operating systems like QNX, VxWorks, Integrity, and SafeRTOS started early with security certification, while Thread-X and uC/OS have caught up in recent years. The open-source Zephyr is currently working on certification, aiming to become the first open-source embedded operating system to pass security certification. As mentioned earlier, Shanghai Ruihua’s RTOS has been successfully applied to the safety certification computing platform of the leading company in rail transit signaling, Casco Signal Co., Ltd., indicating that domestic embedded operating systems have already achieved safety capabilities and possess corresponding technical capabilities.
The virtualization of embedded operating systems has been around for a long time, and almost all major RTOS companies have their own hypervisors, such as ENEA and Wind River. However, hypervisors face issues with low performance and lack of unified device drivers. With the successful adoption of container technology in servers and cloud computing, container technology has proven to provide application-level security, and this lightweight container technology has attracted attention in the IoT and embedded systems. Currently, significant progress has been made in research on lightweight container technology based on Linux, such as Canonical’s Ubuntu Core targeting IoT and edge computing platforms, and its similar Docker-like Snap package management software, as well as ResinOS (now renamed BalenaOS) for IoT support container technology.
Many IoT devices use MCUs that cannot run Linux, and companies like Yihui Information and Huawei have launched lightweight secure container technologies that implement container technology based on their RTOS, meeting the new demands for security, real-time, and rapid deployment and management in the IoT era.
The kernel of embedded operating systems continues to show a diverse landscape, with macro-kernel-based RTOS still dominating. The application of microkernel technology in commercial RTOS dates back to the early 1990s, such as VRTXsa, and remains active in the market with QNX as a representative product. Due to real-time factors, microkernel technology is rarely applied to code-constrained MCUs, while uC/OS, FreeRTOS, and RT-Thread are all macro-kernel technologies. How to enjoy some features of large OS in MCUs while retaining the advantages of RTOS in size and real-time performance? AliOS Things has made beneficial attempts on ARM architecture Cortex M and A processors, achieving features such as security, multi-application, reliable kernel, and dynamic low-traffic upgrades.
AIOT applications pose new challenges to traditional operating systems, such as scalable kernel technology, functional safety and information security, support for edge computing architectures, and convenient deployment and management of application apps. Traditional mobile operating systems like Android and open-source Linux cannot meet the needs for functional safety certification and strong real-time performance, while traditional macro-kernel-based RTOS cannot meet the needs for system scalability, maintenance, and ease of application. Broad embedded operating systems targeting AIOT scenarios and general IoT OS technologies are being explored and researched, such as operating system technologies for autonomous driving cars that are attracting attention from industry and academia.
It is foreseeable that embedded operating systems and IoT OS will develop in two directions: towards large, complex, and configurable systems, and towards smaller, safer, and hardened systems, to meet the new demands of the computing architecture and application software platform development in the IoT and artificial intelligence era. Embedded software has experienced a dominance of microprocessors and hardware design in the 1980s, with a low proportion of software in the system; the emergence of commercial RTOS in the 1990s solved some software complexity issues; after 2000, the large-scale adoption of open-source software brought significant changes to development methods; after 2010, IoT architecture and applications drove the return of distributed real-time software; it is expected that by 2020, “software-defined hardware” will drive changes in embedded software development methods, including new development opportunities for operating system technologies of embedded and IoT OS.
Author: He Xiaoqing, a well-known expert in embedded systems, has been engaged in embedded and IoT technology, industry, and education for a long time, and has authored five books including “The Chronicles of Embedded Operating Systems: Historical Evolution and Future of IoT” and dozens of papers.
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