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Over View
 The QNX® Neutrino® RTOS is a full-featured and robust OS that scales down to meet the constrained resource requirements of realtime embedded systems. Its true microkernel design and its modular architecture enable customers to create highly optimized and reliable systems with low total cost of ownership. It offers the embedded industry’s only field-proven, clean strategy for migrating from single-core to multi-core processing. QNX Neutrino RTOS architecture
Because every driver, protocol stack, filesystem, and application runs in the safety of memory-protected user space, virtually any component can be automatically restarted if it fails.
True microkernel OS
The QNX Neutrino RTOS (realtime operating system) is so reliable because it is a true microkernel operating system.
Under QNX Neutrino, every driver, protocol stack, filesystem and application runs in the safety of memory-protected user space, outside the kernel. Virtually any component can fail — and be automatically restarted — without affecting other components or the kernel. No other commercial RTOS offers this degree of protection.
Multicore migration
The QNX Neutrino RTOS has a field-proven strategy for migrating from single-processor to multi-processor embedded environments. Its unique bound multi-processing (BMP) technology takes the risk out of migration by enabling developers to decide exactly where every process and thread will run.
Benefits
The QNX® Neutrino® RTOS offers great economic and technical advantages thanks to its ability to extract extremely fast, predictable response times from inexpensive embedded hardware.
Low risk, high reliability
Since 1980, manufacturers have relied on QNX RTOS technology to power their mission-critical applications — everything from medical instruments and Internet routers to telematics devices, 911 call centers, process control applications, and air traffic control systems.
Small or large, simple or distributed, these systems share an unmatched reputation for operating 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, non-stop. Time-tested and field-proven, the QNX Neutrino RTOS sets the industry standard for reliability, fault tolerance, and scalability.
Low BOM cost
The QNX Neutrino RTOS is the perfect OS for reducing the per-unit costs of embedded hardware. It can offer the best possible performance, even on inexpensive hardware, thanks to:
· True realtime OS design — predictable response times and extremely fast interrupt latencies and context switches
· Microkernel architecture — robust, self-healing systems
· Adaptive partitioning — optimal use of all available CPU capacity for high performance with a small memory footprint
Self-healing systems
The QNX Neutrino RTOS provides a level of fault containment and recovery offered by no other commercial RTOS.
Its microkernel architecture has every driver, protocol stack, filesystem and application run outside the kernel, in the safety of memory-protected user space. Virtually any component can fail and be automatically restarted without affecting other components or the kernel.
Scale large or small
The same RTOS, tools, APIs, and source code are used for developing and implementing systems to meet all manner of requirements for single-processor and multi-processor systems, large and small.
Guaranteed system resources
QNX adaptive partitioning technololgy can guarantee system resources for all applications as needed. Under normal operating conditions it allows applications to use all available CPU cycles, but during overload conditions, it enforces hard resource guarantees, ensuring that all applications receive their budgeted share of resources.
Extensive board support
The QNX Neutrino RTOS supports a broad range of x86, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS and SH-4 platforms.
The resource manager framework, which, unlike conventional drivers, runs in memory-protected user space, simplifies driver development for custom hardware.
Efficient product development
The QNX Neutrino RTOS enables rapid and efficient product development in a number of ways:
· The microkernel architecture facilitates bug identification and resolution, and enables safe and rapid component upgrades without costly downtimes or system outages
· Just one OS and one set of binaries can target single-processor devices, SMP systems, or processor clusters
· Open-source UNIX, Linux, and other code can be ported with a simple recompile because QNX Neutrino is engineered to the POSIX standard (1003.1-2001 POSIX.1)
· Standard POSIX APIs not only let developers easily reuse application code but also provide a familiar development environment
· Development teams can reuse code and reduce their verification efforts thanks to field-tested binaries — drivers, applications, custom OS services, etc, which can be implemented across entire product lines
· Out-of-the-box support for a wide range of networking protocols and flash filesystems, and a built-in high availability solution reduce overall development work
Technology
The QNX® Neutrino® RTOS is a full-featured and robust OS with a number of unique technological features that set it apart from all other competitive products.
1. Tech overview
2. ealtime
3. Microkernel
4. Partitioning
5. High availability
6. Networking
7. Distributed processing
8. Filesystems
9. PPS
10.Fastboot
Realtime
The QNX Neutrino RTOS provides deterministic response times at the application level and in all subsystems. Thread priority inheritance eliminates priority inversion problems.
Self-healing systems
Thanks to the microkernel architecture of the QNX Neutrino RTOS, virtually any component — even a low-level driver — can fail without damaging the kernel or other components. What’s more, failed components can be restarted quickly and intelligently.
Adaptive partitioning
With the QNX Neutrino RTOS, spare CPU capacity is used when available. If resources are constrained, processes get their budgeted share. If, however, a system has spare cycles, processes can exceed their budget limits.
High availability
If a device driver, protocol stack, or application experiences a problem, it does not take other components down with it. The QNX Neutrino RTOS high availability manager can terminate and restore the faulting component in isolation — often in just a few milliseconds without a reboot.
Networking
Supported networking technologies include IPv4, IPv6, IPSec, FTP, HTTP, SSH and Telnet. Unique transparent distributed processing enables an application to access resources on any node in a network for seamless peer-to-peer resource sharing.
Filesystems
QNX filesystems execute outside the microkernel in memory-protected user space. Developers can start, stop, or upgrade filesystems on the fly without having to reboot. Multiple filesystems can run concurrently on the same target and even work in concert to extend one another’s capabilities.
Portability
Extensive support for POSIX standards facilitates application portability and rapid migration from Linux, Unix, and other open source programs.
Runtime support and BSPs for popular chipsets, including ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SH-4, and x86, lets designers select the best hardware platform for their embedded system, then quickly get their systems up and running.
Multicore Overview
QNX® Software Systems offers the only full multicore solution for embedded RTOS systems on the market.
Multi-processor capable since 1997, and deployed on multicore processors in virtually every embedded environment, the QNX® Neutrino® RTOS offers:
· Symmetric (SMP), asymmetric (AMP), and bound (BMP) multi-processing models
· Inherent scalability — symmetric and bound multi-processing scale seamlessly beyond two processors
· Support for a wide range of popular multi-processor boards
1. Multicore overview
2. Bound multi-processing
3. Multicore tools
In addition to its unparalleled reliability and self-healing capabilities, the QNX Neutrino RTOS microkernel architecture offers significant advantages over monolithic kernels.
Monolithic kernels
Monolithic kernels, such as Microsoft Windows or Linux, require either big kernel locks (BKL) or fine-grain locking. This is more problematic than QNX’s microkernel implementation because:
· BKLs can cause long delays for threads requiring kernel access when the kernel is running on a different core, greatly degrading coherency
· Fine grained locking introduces large amount of complexity into code, creating fragile, difficult to understand system level interactions, without solving the entire problem — timeliness of access is still restricted to the degree of locking implemented in the current subsystem
Microkernels
With the QNX microkernel, kernel operations are relatively few and of short duration. This minimal locking approach improves the performance of the rest of the system because neither BKL or fine grained locking approaches are necessary.
Long time-scale operations (including process managers) run in process space, and because of that, they do not halt the scheduling of other threads in the system: applications, drivers, or protocol stacks. Keeping extended duration operations in process threads (and outside the kernel) grants the microkernel the freedom to schedule regular process threads across multiple CPUs.
Efficient development
The QNX Neutrino RTOS enables rapid time-to-market for multicore applications:
· Reuse existing applications
· Advanced visualization tools for multicore systems
· Multicore debugging and optimization tools
· SMP and BMP provide full visibility of all application processes and system resources
POSIX
POSIX certified
The QNX® Neutrino® RTOS supports hundreds of POSIX commands, utilities, and programming interfaces that maximize code portability and reusability. This rich, standards-based environment includes familiar shells and command-line interfaces, and allows developers to quickly migrate Linux, Unix, and other open source programs to QNX.
The QNX Neutrino RTOS is certified for conformance to the POSIX PSE52 Realtime Controller 1003.13-2003 System product standard. Government agencies as well as commercial customers can choose the QNX Neutrino RTOS with the assurance that it provides both the code portability and the realtime determinism needed for an array of military, networking, medical, and automotive systems.
Engineered for POSIX
The QNX Neutrino RTOS was engineered from the ground up for POSIX standards. This approach eliminates the complex POSIX adaptation layer needed by other RTOSs, resulting in faster performance and lower memory costs for embedded applications.
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