• ARM System Developer's Guide: Designing and Optimizing System Software (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)
• MicroC OS II: The Real Time Kernel (With CD-ROM)
• Embedded Linux Primer: A Practical Real-World Approach (Prentice Hall Open Source Software Development Series)
• Programming Embedded Systems: With C and GNU Development Tools, 2nd Edition
• Embedded Systems Architecture: A Comprehensive Guide for Engineers and Programmers (Embedded Technology)

Literal reprint of Express Logic's free documentation for ThreadX
Review written by: Malleus Maleficarum From
All you need to know, Dear Reader, is that this book is -- literally -- a selective reprint of Express Logic's ThreadX User's Guide that is available for free download on their site. Differences? It's pared down a bit and a perfunctory chapter on ARM hardware is tacked on. What did the author actually contribute to this book? His 'PhD' for the cover?

Also, nearly one third (100 out of 350 pages) of this book is padding: an API reference, a more comprehensive version of which is, yes, again, available for free download from Express Logic.

Bottom line: I CANNOT in good conscience recommend this book: first and foremost because 99% of its content is excerpted verbatim from the freely available ThreadX User's Guide and the remaining 1% is covered better elsewhere (for example, in _ARM System Developer's Guide_ by Sloss -- a fundamental, extensive, and very well-written book).

PS. A side observation: I've never seen a good book from this publisher, CMP (formerly R&D). I just thought I'd share.

Well-balanced Introduction to RTOS Concepts and ThreadX
Review written by: tedrain From Poway, CA
This book provides a solid introduction to embedded kernel mechanics and a detailed discussion of the ThreadX operating system. The first five chapters present a light overview of real-time operating system concepts, the ThreadX kernel and the ARM processor. The next seven chapters focus on classic issues faced by kernel designers, including critical sections, mutual exclusion, synchronization, inter-thread communication and memory management. Another chapter discusses ARM exception handling, and the final one provides a complete implementation of a real-time system in C using ThreadX system calls to illustrate the utility of an embedded kernel. The book concludes with a number of detailed appendices documenting the ThreadX API.

Each fundamental RTOS concept (eg mutual exclusion, memory management) receives a balanced, detailed treatment that explores generic OS issues and corresponding ThreadX-specific services. The text is straightforward and non-academic, aimed more at engineer-practitioners than at students of operating system theory. Essentially this is a technical discussion of ThreadX, demonstrating that the kernel provides clean solutions to classic real-time design challenges.

Another review indicates that padded appendices contain API reference material which can be freely downloaded from a vendor website. Given that the appendices account for appx 25% of content, I agree that buyers should be informed. I also think that the appendices are very helpful to those of us who prefer the convenience of self-contained material, and who prefer to avoid the inconvenience of downloading/printing/handling an additional document. All-in-all I like the API section and consider this a matter of personal preference.

I have one minor quibble with the equal emphasis given to ThreadX and ARM in the title. The book is clearly RTOS-centric, much more concerned with operating system concepts than with details of the ARM core. The light ARM material mainly illustrates the coupling of ThreadX to a particular processor architecture, and readers should not expect an ARM technical guide.

A good reference and introduction in one package
Review written by: S. Katz From Boston, MA
I was very pleasantly surprised with how well this book performed at 2 very different levels. It provided a very simple introduction to Real Time programming (with a definite focus on the ThreadX OS) as well as being a very useful reference for an experienced ThreadX user.

I have been using ThreadX for several years (although not on the ARM processor) and I wanted the book to help with training some new programmers as well as to evaluate the option of using the ARM on a new project. I was impressed as to how well the book helped to achieve these goals.

The book gives a clear explanation on how the various Operating System services are used and where they are appropriate. The demonstration version of ThreadX was very useful for playing with the concepts and getting a "hands on" feel for how things worked without having to deal with all the details of how to get a program running on an embedded system.

I also liked the description of how the system is implemented on the ARM processor, it gave enough detail that I could understand the interaction with the hardware and made it much simpler to introduce a non-ARM architecture as part of the training.

As useful as the book was for the introduction and training aspect, I have noticed that it has also become my standard ThreadX reference at work, which was not what I expected. While the ThreadX documentation does have more detail I have found it much simpler to use this book and I have only needed to refer to the "official" documentation once or twice since I got this book. I have also found the demonstration OS very useful for prototyping and testing.

The only group that I think may not find this book as useful a reference, is the knowledgable embedded developer who is not working with ThreadX and wants to find out more about the OS or about the ARM processor. For this audience there is probably insufficient depth and more detail than they require, but for anyone who is entering the field or is working with ThreadX regularly I would highly reccomend this book.

Extremely Practical
Review written by: John Matlock From Winnemucca, NV
This is the most useful book on embedded programming that I've ever read. The reason for this is its practical aspects.

First it talks about what is probably (certainly the one I use so I guess I'm prejudiced) the most CPU used in widest range of embedded applications.

Second it picks one of the standard real time operating systems (ThreadX -- and includes a demo system of the RTOS on the bound in CD).

The book gives a clear introduction into the goals and techniques used in embedded programming.

Finally it discusses in detail a case study of the design of a typical embedded system. In fact the device they are building looks so useful that I wonder if it isn't a real product.

Again, this is an excellent introduction, suitable for the engineering being assigned to a project or the manager beginning to specify one.