QNX RTP Running on iPaq

An anonymous reader sends in: "iPaq just got new gracious looks. QNX microkernel and the gracious Photon micro GUI did wonders to iPaq. Get a sneak preview here. If you are in Boston next week, be sure to drop by Embedded Systems Boston to try your hands at the qPaq... ;)"

Comments

So when are they going to be *real* machines?

[Uruk]

These PDAs are getting neater and more powerful every day, but when are they going to be real machines?

I mean, eventually we could have a setup where you would buy a full size monitor and keyboard for office and home, and then just buy one little Super PDA to plug the monitor and keyboard into to use as a full PC. If they can get wireless networking down into that size package (which I'm sure they will eventually) you'd even be able to network without current crappy PDA packet modems or anything like that.

Re: QNX, why bother?

[Bodero]

You should hear our embedded systems engineers laughing or crying about "Real Time Windows CE" depending on whether they chortling at it's response times, or miserable about being forced to use it respectively.

Your laughter is borne out of ignorance. Everybody publishes OS times for their OS when running in kernel mode only (which offers zero protection from processes run amok). But CE and EPOC don't run in that mode--you can't on these platforms since they're open and could be running malicious code.

To wit, look at QNX (http://www.qnx.com/products/os/qnxrtos.html#Perfo rmance) and On Time (http://www.on-time.com/index.html?page=rtk45.htm) . Great numbers, but only for kernel mode operation.

For protected systems using the MMU, it seems all the big players don't publish numbers. Why? Because this is a tough environment and the numbers look like shit. QNX offers nothing on their site about their Neutrino product performance. Neither do Mentor or Wind River.

Even the RT Linux folks are flaky here. http://www.zentropix.com/support/document/helpdox/ rtai.pdf claims they can deliver a 4 uS average interrupt response time with 13 uS of jitter, resulting in 17 uS worst case interrupt response time. This is on a 233 MHz Pentium II.

Microsoft are claiming 7.5 uS worst case ISR latency on a 90 MHz Pentium II for CE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/techart/real_pe rf.htm). We're seeing similar numbers on a StrongARM platform at a similar clock.

Clearly, CE is probably on par with the QNX/PSOS/VRTX crowd.

So, until Symbian actually publish some numbers on their interrupt performance, we can assume that, like code size, they are merely FUD'ing the industry.

As for the topic at hand, however, it's wonderful to see something like QNX running on iPac, maybe make one worth getting after all ;)

Uh, excuse me?

[Danborg]

...but isn't this supposed to be a PDA? Look at the screenshots again... look at the 10 apps.... where is "Calendar"? -- where is "Contacts"? -- where is "E-mail"? -- where is "To Do List"?

Beautiful OS, but clearly not an organizer.

Re: QNX, why bother?

[variable]

First of all - those numbers are for QNX4 (our previous generation kernel, x86 only). The iPaq is running QNX6. And we do have numbers - I am not sure if they are posted on our website yet or not but they are going to be made with each and every release. And yet another thing - QNX isn't your average monolithic kernel. There is no "kernel" mode for timings that mean anything. Everything is based on a message passing infustructure (from device drivers to networking to filesystems to the GUI).

Re:QNX? QPE!

[TheeAlien]

I have two different replies for you; one to why QPE is not better, and one about your GPL zinger....

Firstly reasons to chose QNX over QPE for your iPaq...

(1) QPE has alot of legacy attached to it.

(2) Qt applications can already run fine in QNX so all they really need is a recompile to work.

(3) It's cheeper to develop on QNX then QPE.

(4) It's bulky, really bulky - QNX can run quite comfortably in 5 megs of RAM - QPE requires much more.

(5) It's prettier... sorry, it just is.

Now the GPL issue..

Sorry to tell you but the GPL is not a good thing (TM).

Software on the QNX version of the iPaq can use the GPL if the author desires, however many real embeded developers have a great dislike for it (for many reasons). In fact, I'd like to tell you a little story.

Back before QNX 6.0 was released to the public QNX uses ALSA for sound... for it seemed like a good idea at the time - "simply tweek the drivers and recompile for QNX" said the QSSL engineers "It'll make our jobs alot easier!" they said.

But it diddent! See, many of the big audio corporations had what is known as "propritary hardware", and in order to have a real, fully-accelerated driver they'd have to relase all their secrets to the public and their competition.

QSSL soon figured out the problems with this; Is it better to have an OS that has rocking sound with a few-closed source drivers or an OS with okay sound and a couple of problematic drivers beacuse big busness dosent wana share technical specs?

So, the poor old QSSL engineers rewrote the sound system from the ground up so it wouldnt be tainted (yes, thats the right word - tainted) by the GPL. Now big busness likes them! As they can make driver or submit secret information to QSSL under a NDA for them to make excellent drivers, plus most of the sound system is open-source (download the Audio DDK and see for yourself). It's really a win-win situation.

And remember - Many pats of QNX -ARE- open-source (not just the sound system!), and the open-source parts (for the greater part) can be used for both comercial and non comercial purpose, but are not GPL'ed.

One must NOT confuse the GPL and the open-source philosphy, as they are two different things.