Comments on RTOSes

Hello all.

I am starting a research to identify a RTOS to be deployed in several
medical products. The product line includes some low to medium end
products based on Xscale (PXA255) and some medium to high end products
based on x86 compatible processors (Geode at the moment, some Intel
offspring in a near future).

Some of the main requirements I have to guide my research are:
1- Reputable manufacturer (in both market time and product record.)
2- Support to the architectures above.
3- Decent development tools.
4- Good networking support.
5- Decent graphics support (optimized graphics drivers desirable.)
6- File system with fault recovery (FAT16/32 compatible if possible).
7- Flash file system availability.
8- Scalability (low footprint on small systems).

Some of the products may work stad alone whereas others must be network
connected to exchange information with other medical systems (clynical
software, image archiving systems etc.) and that is the reason for the
4th item above. Different resource requirements are foreseen, going
from moderate (when information exchanged is mostly patient related
data, and system status and configuration data) to high as running some
sort of java virtual machine (at low priority) is a possible
requirement to make software development people's life easier when
developing some clients to be connected to the aforementioned systems.

There are some other requirements but the above are the most important
and are in (sort of) order of importance for all the personnel involved
in product development (for many of them, item 3 should be on the top
of the list.) Also the above above may seem somewhat limited but I am
assuming others more technical such as IPC mechanisms, fault tolerance,
fault recovery capability, memory protection between processes, bounded
latency, priority inversion mitigation and so forth are met in some way
by the candidates on the top of my list.

After a quick preliminary research I am considering the following
RTOSes: QNX, LynxOS, VxWorks, Integrity and OSE.

I believe each product may excel in some requirements but not in
others. Therefore I would appreciate if you folks could provide some
insights on this matter to provide me with some information that help
me to make a decision. Suggestions on others RTOSes that could fit and
are worth taking a look are welcome too.

Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Josias.

Josias R. P. Langoni wrote:

> Hello all.
> 
> I am starting a research to identify a RTOS to be deployed in several
> medical products. The product line includes some low to medium end
> products based on Xscale (PXA255) and some medium to high end products
> based on x86 compatible processors (Geode at the moment, some Intel
> offspring in a near future).
> 
> Some of the main requirements I have to guide my research are:
> 1- Reputable manufacturer (in both market time and product record.)

One company that I have worked alongside in such projects is MPE (see 
http://www.mpeltd.demon.co.uk/). This was for an anaesthesia ventillator on 
which I assisted in software inspection and certification.

> 2- Support to the architectures above.

Not sure if they currently hit all your target processors but they find it 
relatively easy to add another processor to the list they do 
cross-compilers for.

> 3- Decent development tools.
Goes without saying in such an application. Yes, they are fairly decent 
tools to use.

> 4- Good networking support.
> 5- Decent graphics support (optimized graphics drivers desirable.)
> 6- File system with fault recovery (FAT16/32 compatible if possible).
> 7- Flash file system availability.
> 8- Scalability (low footprint on small systems).

These last items should also be no real problem for them.

[%X]

As you have mentioned that this is for medical devices I am certain that 
you require companies that have had experience with CE (Medical Devices) 
and FDA approvals processes, and have a track record of producing excellent 
quality software and documentation.

-- 
********************************************************************
Paul E. Bennett ....................<email://peb@amleth.demon.co.uk>
Forth based HIDECS Consultancy .....<http://www.amleth.demon.co.uk/>
Mob: +44 (0)7811-639972
Tel: +44 (0)1235-811095
Going Forth Safely ....EBA. http://www.electric-boat-association.org.uk/
********************************************************************

Josias R. P. Langoni wrote:
> Some of the main requirements I have to guide my research are:
> 1- Reputable manufacturer (in both market time and product record.)
> 2- Support to the architectures above.
> 3- Decent development tools.
> 4- Good networking support.
> 5- Decent graphics support (optimized graphics drivers desirable.)
> 6- File system with fault recovery (FAT16/32 compatible if possible).
> 7- Flash file system availability.
> 8- Scalability (low footprint on small systems).

Consider Express Logic & ThreadX/NetX/FileX:

http://www.expresslogic.com

-->Neil

> After a quick preliminary research I am considering the following
> RTOSes: QNX, LynxOS, VxWorks, Integrity and OSE.

The list definitely lacks of

On-Time (www.on-time.com) RTOS-32 (Win32 compatible) for X86
and
their partners ebsnet (www.ebsnetinc.com) RTKernelRISC for X-Scale.

Using RTOS-32 (32bit) for X86 and its predecessor RTKernel (16bit) for more
than ten years now.
Very small footprints possible, very small interrrupt latencies, extremely
good support (f. e. in case you need drivers for special hardware).

Juergen

>After a quick preliminary research I am considering the following
>RTOSes: QNX, LynxOS, VxWorks, Integrity and OSE.

Might consider Sciopta, direct message passing like QNX and OSE.
(I do work for Sciopta)

-- 
42Bastian
Do not email to bastian42@yahoo.com, it's a spam-only account :-)
Use <same-name>@monlynx.de instead !

Neil Bradley wrote:
> Josias R. P. Langoni wrote:
> > Some of the main requirements I have to guide my research are:
> > 1- Reputable manufacturer (in both market time and product record.)
> > 2- Support to the architectures above.
> > 3- Decent development tools.
> > 4- Good networking support.
> > 5- Decent graphics support (optimized graphics drivers desirable.)
> > 6- File system with fault recovery (FAT16/32 compatible if
possible).
> > 7- Flash file system availability.
> > 8- Scalability (low footprint on small systems).
>
> Consider Express Logic & ThreadX/NetX/FileX:
>
> http://www.expresslogic.com
> 
> -->Neil

It was in my list. I just forgot to mention it.

Josias.

Josias R. P. Langoni wrote:

> Hello all.
> 
> I am starting a research to identify a RTOS to be deployed in several
> medical products. The product line includes some low to medium end
> products based on Xscale (PXA255) and some medium to high end products
> based on x86 compatible processors (Geode at the moment, some Intel
> offspring in a near future).
> 

You have not mentioned if any of these products need to meet FDA or MDD
requirements.  If they do then you may not be able to use a pre-emptive
RTOS.

Ian
-- 
Ian Bell

Sorry for replying to myself. I appreciated the inputs. Though it's
great having so many choices, it makes life hard when one has to make a
decision. That's why I tend to narrow my search on those RTOSes I
mentioned in my post.

I wonder if there is no person that worked with one of those brands
willing to share their experience with them as it's hard to figure out
the real virtues and limitations of such products base only upon
manufacturer's catalogues or websites. For instance, from what I could
learn from reading their website I wasn't quite impressed by VxWorks
(5.x) as far as development tools are concerned though AFAIK it is one
of the main if not the main player in RTOS and related stuff market.

Thanks again and my best regards.

Josias.

"Josias R. P. Langoni" <jrplangoni@yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:1109889947.257475.89520@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> I wonder if there is no person that worked with one of those brands
> willing to share their experience with them as it's hard to figure out
> the real virtues and limitations of such products base only upon
> manufacturer's catalogues or websites.

I have worked extensively with ThreadX and NetX over the last few years with
some exposure to FileX. Overall I am very happy with the quality of the 
systems
and the performance. The memory footprint is relatively small and when we
have had any questions or issues (most of them our fault or lack of 
understanding)
the support has been excellent. When there were any issues, they were fixed 
very
quickly.

I have used VRTX (many years ago) and uCOS and ThreadX is definitely a 
better
product than these. It is a microkernel and doesn't have the services 
available in
the Linux based or Wind river products but the speed and response are 
significantly
better (for a given MHz/CPU).

I would have no hestation in reccomending ThreadX/NetX/FileX if it meets 
your
requirements (i.e. a solid, low footprint platform). I have not used their 
graphics
library but based on my experience with them I would assume it is also solid 
and
reliable.

Stan Katz 

Would you mind to hint where in FDA standards and MDD should I look at
to find the articles that support this statement? We have other persons
taking care of standards and certication but I assumed (I come from
telecom) using a preemptive RTOS wouldn't be an issue (RTOS
manufacturer ads seem to support this assumption.) If it turns out to
be an issue, we'd get to it eventually but not before wasting time.

TIA

Josias.