“One of the reasons that Windows has been considered as an
alternative in some embedded applications, despite its reputation
for crashing, was its complete ubiquity,” said Eric Powers, vice
president of software development at OneChannel Inc. (Davis,
Calif.). “Other than Unix, the one operating system with a set of
APIs with which virtually every developer has familiarity is
Windows.” With the emergence of free open-source versions of
Unix, such as Linux, the combination of familiarity and low cost
makes this operating system a compelling alternative. “And as
versions of Linux, hardened and adapted for the embedded market,
emerge, Windows will have a much harder time of it,” he
said.”
“Operating systems that will have an edge in the new market for
embedded devices with increasing degrees of connectivity, said Rob
Krten, a software R&D consultant at QNX Software Systems Ltd.
(Kanata, Ontario), will be those that incorporate network operation
as a part of their basic design, not as an afterthought. Here
again, said Ready of MontaVista, Unix-Linux will have an edge. “The
Internet is part and parcel of Unix,” he says “Protocols such as IP
and TCP/IP stacks and utilities and, indeed, the Internet itself
grew up on and around Unix systems.” Today, said Ready, most of the
Internet and telecommunications infrastructure runs over Unix
software: “You cannot visit a Web site, send e-mail or dial into
the Web without traversing at least one Unix server….”
“However, said Krten, don’t count RTOSes out of the middleware
game. Much of the functionality necessary to ensure reliable
operation in a networked environment is integral to several
operating systems, such as QNX’ Neutrino, Unix-Linux and Lucent’s
Inferno, which make use of features such as name spaces to make
arrays of distributed computers more reliable.”