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BSD Real-Time Operating System NuttX Makes Its 100th Release: NuttX 6.33
paugq writes "NuttX is a real-time operating system (RTOS) with an emphasis on standards compliance and small footprint. Scalable from 8-bit to 32-bit microcontroller environments, the primary governing standards in NuttX are POSIX and ANSI standards. Additional standard APIs from Unix and other common RTOS's (such as VxWorks) are adopted for functionality not available under these standards, or for functionality that is not appropriate for deeply-embedded environments. NuttX was first released in 2007 by Gregory Nutt under the permissive BSD license, and today the 100th release was made: NuttX 6.33. Supported platforms include ARM, Atmel AVR, x86, Z80 and others."
Slashdot and BSD are dead!!
Seems like a pretty ambitious project to run on a Z80. Good thing this isn't April 1st.
I've seen some Z80 based software that implemented various bits of Unix-like functionality. Some of them appeared to be pretty impressive, but nothing like the list at the site. I would assume that the available functionality is going to vary by architecture given the constraints present on the low end.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Oh and beta doesn't work right. It gave me this worthless error message:
"Filter error: You can type more than that for your comment."
Ima bout to bust a NuttX.
Cool... anyone tried it on Raspberry Pi?
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Lol "Nutt". I understand that the actual real name of the guy who made it, but seriously. Here's what you do: mentally picture Beavis and Butthead saying the name of your product. If they laughed after they said it, that's not a good name for a product.
Had a friend ask me this once. I honestly couldn't come up with an answer. You look at the nuts and bolts of O/S's both realtime and non realtime, and it's basically all the same stuff, with more emphasis given to lower transaction times. Is it just a buzzword? Not trying to troll, but if someone has a definitive answer I'd love to hear it.
Netcraft is down. That's what you get when you use systemd.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> This is impossible to flatly guarantee ... no RTOS is going to assure that.
Does that include a "trivial" RTOS, or are you speaking only of an RTOS of significantly complexity? It would seem that on an MCU, the very simplest OS, the "HelloWorld.asm" of operating systems, would absolutely run each of its functions in the exact same number of cycles, every single time. On a Z80, for example, INC always takes exactly one cycle, and ADD take two cycles, every time.
On a Core processor it would be much less consistent due to pipelining, out-of-order execution, etc., but these little MCUs don't do any of that, do they?
Some of the little bit of MCU code I've written has been fairly sensitive to timing and I've figured that 4 cycles is 4 cycles, every time. Have I been doing it wrong?
This looks interesting but I can't find any information on whether it can run an SSH server or HTTPS on their site or through google. Does anyone know if it would be possible to port something Dropbear SSH to NuttX (assuming the CPU can handle it)?
They claim they have a POSIX-like system, which Dropbear needs so it should be possible, but has anyone done it yet?
Unicode in Slashdot
The headline creates the impression that this is a real-time adaptation of BSD (the "Berkeley Software Distribution", that is, BSD Unix). In fact, this OS is an original development; it is merely licensed under the terms that BSD is licensed under.
Would the headline have said "A GNU real-time OS" if it was licensed under the GPL, the license of the GNU operating system?
Some years ago in motor racing's Formula 1 competitions, when computer-controllers were in their infancy, Ferrari ran into driver problems -- they kept burning up tires and/or crashing. As it was well-known at the time that Ferrari motors were more powerful than their competition, there was a lot of "expert" press and fanboy head-scratching.
In the off-season, FIAT (Ferrari's parent company) bought Wind RIver RTS, which ran as 32-bit instead of 16, giving Ferraris more even (deeper bit depth) throttle response. Result? The next two seasons, no one could catch them, crashing was a thing of the past and so was excessive tire wear from wheelspin as the drivers had finer control of traction through their right foot.
Eventually, other teams went to 32-bit RT and Ferrari's dominance has waned..
You never know when a RTOS will make the difference.
Real real-time OSs have various elements that are REQUIRED for real-time:
- Masked interrupts (you can PREVENT hardware interrupts from actuating code, instead scheduling future software handlers)
- Determnisitic interrupts (so that you can tell WHEN the clock will force action, not "generally" when clock "will or will later" react)
- Codepath timings (so you know how long it takes to execute X, and X won't change during the life of the system).
BSD-based systems are knocking on the door of being usable. It will be a while before these "We're true to our 1970s
Unix codebase and we don't play well with others copyleft" systems can catch up to the 20th century, the 21st century,
and real-time software-design and OS requirements.
I love watching ants build anthills. They are so proud of their work. They make great molten-lead art.
Just like BSD being used for anything other than pretending it's almost as good as linux, neither of
which are good for real time OSs.
M
> This is impossible to flatly guarantee ... no RTOS is going to assure that.
Does that include a "trivial" RTOS, or are you speaking only of an RTOS of significantly complexity? It would seem that on an MCU, the very simplest OS, the "HelloWorld.asm" of operating systems, would absolutely run each of its functions in the exact same number of cycles, every single time.
Barring a hardware failure or power failure or .... There are things(tm) that the (RT)OS just can't fix. Some fix/manage more than others but in the end it's up to the system integrator and customer to decide if a system is a suitable real time solution.
The culture of understanding operating system design and coding has eroded so much and slashdot mods are so random that there are none left who understand what real-time os programming is all about. That's why the parent is mod 0. Sadly this is just one of many topics that random slashdot mods know nothing about, and vote things down because they don't say PS-4 or Kinect or Supermodels or whatever. It's not the beginning of dumbing down slashdot and it's not the end, but it's definitely part of the process.
More bad news. Those of us who do understand these things will quit reading slashdot because as you mods with no training nor knowledge continue to eviscerate anyone who gives you a clue (because you don't know any better lacking any education on the topic) we'll quit reading. You'll like that, because the high fives and accolades we don't give you will be filled by those who do.
I'm not warning you. It's too late. I'm just sharing so later when you wonder "how did we get to be an inbred community of idiots when we asked for input from all quarters" you'll know... you didn't ask for input from all quarters. You randomly elevated those who randomly liked posts they understood. The knowledge of the edges will be lost here, and all you'll have is a like minded community of apes who love to argue Linux vs BSD without understanding anything.
Ehud
The summary doesn't give a good idea of the scope of the project. The lead developer is targeting chips with low pincount. He considers more powerful smartphone class ARM's like found on the Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black to be too powerful for his project to make sense, and recommends running linux: http://comments.gmane.org/gman... That said, he offered to help if someone else wanted to do a port for some reason.
A Unix these days is only usable with systemd. Does it run? If not, bury it now.
Greg himself, with some contribution from others, has created and maintained an RTOS that runs from 8 bit to 32-ARMs that is completely configurable, completely open source, and includes ALL the middle-ware that other charge $6K-$16K and he has done 100 releases of an RTOS that beats when it competes with the embOS, uC/OS out there.
A Job Well done!