Understanding VxWorks: A Real-Time Operating System

Total Word Count: 873 | Reading Time: 3 minutes

Keywords: Operating System, RTOS, VxWorks.

Introduction:

NASA has a new plan – the “InSight” lander is set to land on the red planet Mars on November 26, 2018, at 3 PM. There, it will begin its scientific exploration tasks until November 24, 2020, which is equivalent to one year and 40 days in Martian time, roughly translating to two Earth years. This will mark another successful story for the Wind River VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) on Mars. Wind River is very excited to be part of this groundbreaking mission, and VxWorks is the first and only RTOS operating on Mars【1】.

The Evolution of VxWorks

We use operating systems to operate computers【3】. With the development of computer hardware, operating systems have evolved through manual operation, batch processing systems, multiprogramming systems, and modern operating systems.

Unix is known as the cornerstone of the computer/internet industry. Due to Unix’s high portability and powerful performance, along with the absence of copyright disputes at the time, many commercial companies began developing Unix operating systems. The development landscape of various operating systems is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Development Landscape of Operating Systems

Although multiprogramming and time-sharing technologies can achieve satisfactory resource utilization and system response times, they cannot meet the demands of real-time control and real-time information processing. Thus, real-time operating systems emerged. VxWorks is an embedded real-time operating system (RTOS) developed by Wind River in the United States【2】, and it is a typical representative of embedded real-time operating systems. In the commercial RTOS field, Wind River has consistently held the number one market share position.

Figure 2: Distribution of Real-Time Systems Market

VxWorks has evolved continuously over more than thirty years, with new versions being released that support more and more functions, becoming increasingly powerful【5】. The major version changes of VxWorks are as follows:

Table 1: Information on Various Versions of VxWorks

Application Areas of VxWorks

VxWorks is widely used in high-tech fields such as communications, military, and aerospace due to its excellent reliability and outstanding real-time performance【6】. The distribution of major clients in various fields is referenced in the table below:

Table 2: Applications of VxWorks in Various Fields【4】

This entry is provided by the Technical Department of Huachuang Innovation Instrument (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

References

1. http://www.windriver.com.cn/news/press/pr.aspx?newsid=327

2. http://www.windriver.com.cn/news/press/pr.aspx?newsid=360

3. Understanding Computer Systems, by Randal E. Bryant, translated by Gong Yili and He Lian

4. https://blog.csdn.net/u013026227/article/details/74503135

5. https://resources.windriver.com/vxworks/vxworks-product-overview

6. VxWorks Device Driver Development Explained, edited by Cao Guiping