Embedded technology has gradually integrated into our daily lives with the advent of the digital intelligence era. But do you really understand embedded operating systems? 😁😁😁

Question: What exactly is an embedded operating system?

Answer: An embedded operating system is a specific operating system designed for embedded systems, it can effectively manage system resources and provide good task scheduling, memory management, and driver support. It meets the real-time control requirements of embedded operating systems (RTOS).

Below, I will introduce ten mainstream RTOS: RTX, Vxworks, NuttX, μClinux, FreeRTOS, Dujiangyan Operating System (djyos), IntewellOS, AliosThings, Huawei LiteOS, SylixOS.

RTX is an embedded real-time operating system from ARM, written using standard C structure and compiled with the RealView compiler. It is not just a real-time kernel; it also has rich middleware components, is free, and has open code.

Starting and stopping tasks (processes), in addition to supporting process communication, such as task synchronization, management of shared resources (peripherals or memory), and message passing between tasks. Developers can use basic functions to start the real-time runner, start and terminate tasks, and pass control between tasks (round-robin scheduling).

Main Features:

Vxworks is an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) designed and developed by Wind River in the United States in 1983, featuring scalability and security required by the aerospace and defense, industrial, medical, automotive, consumer electronics, networking, and other industries. It supports predictable task synchronization mechanisms, communication between multiple tasks, memory optimization management, and predictable behavior of operating system interrupt latency/task switching/driver latency, etc. It also has a high-performance operating system kernel Wind (good real-time performance, customizable), a friendly development debugging environment, good compatibility, and supports various development and operating environments.

NuttX is a real-time embedded operating system (Embedded RTOS), the first version of which was released by Gregory Nutt in 2007 under a permissive BSD license.

It can be built as an open, flat embedded RTOS, or separately built as a microkernel with system call interfaces, easy to extend to new processor architectures, SoC architectures, or board-level architectures.

NuttX is flexibly configured, using a modular design, with the core part consisting of small components, including the kernel, C library, and low-level runtime package. Each component can provide a large number of configuration options (the real-time kernel can also be an optional configuration), and it can be easily configured using the configuration tools provided by eCos, meeting the different needs of embedded applications through different configurations.

μClinux is an excellent version of embedded Linux, its full name is micro-control Linux, which literally means micro-control Linux.

Compared to standard Linux, μClinux has a very small kernel, but it still inherits the main features of the Linux operating system, including good stability and portability, strong network functionality, excellent file system support, a rich standard API, and TCP/IP network protocols.

The biggest feature of μClinux is the design for processors without MMU, which is suitable for STM32F103 without MMU capabilities, but porting this system requires at least 512KB of RAM space and 1MB of ROM/FLASH space, while STM32F103 has 256K of FLASH, requiring external storage, which increases the hardware design cost.

μClinux has a complex structure, if the embedded product being developed focuses on file systems and network applications, μClinux is a good choice.

Since RTOS requires a certain amount of system resources (especially RAM resources), only μC/OS-II, embOS, salvo, FreeRTOS and a few other real-time operating systems can run on small RAM microcontrollers.

Compared to commercial operating systems like C/OS-II and embOS, FreeRTOS is a completely free operating system with open source code, portability, scalability, and flexible scheduling policies, and it can be easily ported to various microcontrollers (its latest version is 6.0).

As a lightweight operating system, FreeRTOS provides functions including: task management, time management, semaphores, message queues, memory management, logging functions, etc., basically meeting the needs of smaller systems.

The FreeRTOS kernel supports priority scheduling algorithms, where each task can be assigned a certain priority based on its importance, and the highest priority task in the ready state will be prioritized by the CPU. In the absence of higher priority tasks ready, tasks of the same priority will share CPU usage time.

Dujiangyan Operating System, abbreviated as djyos, is named after a great water conservancy project—Dujiangyan. Unlike traditional operating systems, djyos is not scheduled based on threads but on events. This scheduling algorithm frees programmers from the thinking of <simulating computer execution process to write programs>, allowing them to write applications in a way that aligns with human cognition of the world, just like introducing VC into embedded programming.

Intewell Operating System is a microkernel real-time operating system (RTOS) developed by KEDONG Software based on the “Dao” system, featuring software-defined control, high real-time performance, microkernel, microsecond-level response, high reliability, domestically produced and controllable, multi-business carrying, and soft-hard decoupling.

It has good scalability, a friendly user development environment, and rich development debugging tools, providing POSIX interfaces, supporting mainstream chips available in the market. Intewell can also provide real-time extension solutions for Windows and Linux, enabling better business deployment for users.

Main Features:

According to the well-known media on embedded operating systems RTOS, AliosThings is a scalable IoT operating system under the AliOS family, aimed at the IoT field.

AliosThings is committed to building a cloud-integrated IoT infrastructure, featuring extreme performance, minimal development, cloud integration, rich components, and security protection, supporting terminal devices to connect to Alibaba Cloud Link, and can be widely used in smart home, smart city, new mobility, and other fields.

According to the introduction of embedded operating systems RTOS, Huawei LiteOS is a lightweight IoT operating system built by Huawei for the IoT field, with key capabilities such as lightweight low power consumption, fast startup, interconnectivity, and security, providing developers with a “one-stop” complete software platform, effectively lowering development thresholds and shortening development cycles.

According to the introduction of embedded operating systems RTOS, SylixOS is an open-source, cross-platform large-scale real-time operating system (RTOS), born in 2006, and after more than ten years of continuous development, SylixOS has become one of the most comprehensive domestic operating systems.

Currently, there are many product and project application cases, covering industries such as aerospace, military defense, rail transportation, smart grid, industrial automation.

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