06 March 2009

QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4.1 Support For ARM Cortex

QNX has confirmed that 6.4.1 of the QNX Neutrino RTOS introduces support for the ARM Cortex-A8 processor.

The ARM Cortex-A8 processor is the first applications processor based on the ARMv7 architecture and is the highest performance, most power-efficient processor available from ARM. With the ability to scale in speed from 600MHz to greater than 1GHz, the Cortex-A8 processor can meet the requirements for power-optimized mobile devices needing operation in less than 300mW; and performance-optimized consumer applications requiring 2000 Dhrystone MIPS.  The Cortex-A8 processor is ARM’s first superscalar processor featuring  technology for enhanced code density and performance,  NEON technology for multimedia and signal processing, and Jazelle RCT (Runtime Compilation Target) technology for efficient support of ahead-of-time and just-in-time compilation of Java and other bytecode languages. 

In addition, Version 6.4.1 of the QNX Neutrino RTOS adds floating-point unit (FPU) support for the signal processing engine in Freescale PowerPC e500 processor cores, which form the basis of high-performance PowerQUICC III communications processors. QNX already provides symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and bound multiprocessing (BMP) for multi-core processors based on the e500 core.

For systems that require a sophisticated human machine interface (HMI), QNX Neutrino 6.4.1 provides standards-based composition manager. Using the composition manager, developers can seamlessly layer multiple HMI technologies (Adobe Flash Lite, Web browser, 3D graphics, etc.) on the same physical display. Together with QNX secure partitioning, the composition manager can ensure clean separation between graphics applications, allowing systems to download new applications without affecting the performance of existing programs. The composition manager is based on Khronos Group's OpenKODE, an open standard that increases the code portability of graphics applications, QNX said.

To further simplify development of embedded HMIs, QNX Neutrino 6.4.1 introduces a modular, multi-platform, embeddable Web browser. The browser is based on the Webkit engine, which also forms the basis of the Mac OS X and iPhone Safari Web browsers. The composition manager and Web browser complement the existing portfolio of QNX HMI technologies, which include an HMI player based on Adobe Flash Lite 3, support for the OpenGL ES 3D API, and an extensible, fault-tolerant graphics framework.

QNX has   also announced version 6.4.1 of the QNX Momentics Tool Suite, which includes new command-line tools (GCC 4.3), GCC "Mudflap" tool visualization for detecting C/C++ runtime errors that arise from invalid pointer operations, and support for the Eclipse platform 3.4 and the Eclipse CDT 5.0.x.

The QNX Neutrino RTOS 6.4.1 and the QNX Momentics Tool Suite 6.4.1 are scheduled for commercial availability in second quarter 2009.