Are You Evaluating Your RTOS?

What is an RTOS?

A Real Time Operating System (RTOS) is a small piece of software that responds to events by rapidly switching between tasks, giving the impression that multiple programs are being executed at the same time on a single processing core. An RTOS provides a hard real time response, providing a fast, highly deterministic reaction to external events.?For example, if a sensor detects movement, an alarm is sounded. A safety critical RTOS is used in products that could cause harm to life or be potentially fatal, for example in a car braking system. A safety critical RTOS guarantees that the event is responded to - for example if a brake was pressed, the braking software would be executed.

Why would you require an RTOS?

There are well-established techniques for writing embedded software without the use of an RTOS. In some cases, these might be the most appropriate solution; however, as the solution becomes more complex, the benefits of an RTOS become more apparent. An RTOS can be chosen on many factors such as efficiency, maintainability, and priority-based scheduling, but how do you know how good an RTOS is without testing it first? That’s why we recommend evaluating your RTOS.

What are the advantages of an evaluation?

An evaluation is a chance to test the source code of your RTOS for free. Engineers can test the response times and memory usage of their RTOS while getting their application up and running, lowering the risk of their project. Evaluations demonstrate the quality of the code and give an example of what your final product would be.

Do I need to evaluate my software when the RTOS is open source?

You can evaluate an open source RTOS by downloading it, the very nature of opensource. There are some popular open source to safety critical upgrade paths that can also be tested with an evaluation, for example, FreeRTOS to SAFERTOS.

SAFERTOS source code evaluation packages are available for free on the Jacinto TDA4Vx, Sitara AM2x, AM6x and AWR2944 on Texas Instruments SoC. SAFERTOS evaluation packages extend beyond the ARM Cortex R5F and include integrated support for TI’s range of DSP processors including TI DSP C6x and TI DSP C7x. The free SAFERTOS evaluation package provides a full featured, hands-on experience, allowing engineers become accustomed with using SAFERTOS and understand its exceptional high quality before making a purchase. SAFERTOS evaluation package offers engineers access to full SAFERTOS source code, an ‘out of the box’ SAFERTOS demonstration application and user manual. Contact us today to access your evaluation at https://www.highintegritysystems.com/question/.