‘electronicaUSA with ESC:’ Enea launches OSE 5.0 RTOS

San Francisco, CA—Enea Embedded Technology, formerly OSE Systems, launched version 5.0 of its OSE real-time operating system (RTOS) at 'electronicaUSA with Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) 2004,' Mar. 29-April 1, at the Moscone Convention Center.

By Control Engineering Staff March 31, 2004

San Francisco, CA— Enea Embedded Technology , formerly OSE Systems, launched version 5.0 of its OSE real-time operating system (RTOS) at ‘ electronicaUSA with Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) 2004,’ Mar. 29-April 1, at the Moscone Convention Center.

Optimized for wireless devices and telecom networking systems, OSE 5.0 features dynamic program management for persistent media; new virtual memory and memory savings capabilities; enhanced networking support; multimedia flash support; and new ease-of-use features that make it easier than ever to install and configure. OSE 5.0 will initially be available for ARM and Xscale processors, including Motorola’s new ARM-based i.MX21 platform, which is optimized for mobile wireless applications. PowerPC and MIPS support will follow in 4Q2004.

‘Version 5.0 marks a significant upgrade for the industry’s most advanced high-availability RTOS,’ says Eva Skoglund, Esea’s product marketing manager. ‘OSE 5.0 is easier than ever to configure and start up, and provides a host of new memory/program management and networking capabilities that enhance efficiency and flexibility, boost performance and simplify overall system design and integration.’

Networking support for OSE 5.0 includes a dual-mode IPv4/IPv6 TCP/IP stack with MobileIP capability. The stack is available in two versions, a full-featured stack for routing applications that provides advanced security, virtual routing and NAT capabilities, and a compact, high-performance stack optimized for deeply embedded, resource-constrained applications.

OSE 5.0 also offers a comprehensive suite of networking applications, including DHCP, DNS, FTP, TFTP, Telnet, Web Server, SSL and IPSec. OSE 5.0 features dynamic program management for persistent media, such as flash memory, which enables programs to be loaded into flash, execute in place, and survive restarts. OSE 5.0 provides full memory protection for dynamically loaded programs; reclaims memory without fragmentation when it unloads programs; and supports loading/unloading of drivers when new hardware is added/removed. OSE 5.0 also provides multimedia flash support for real-time multithreaded applications such as streaming video.

In addition, OSE 5.0 provides enhanced virtual memory support that enables it to use the memory protection and virtual memory translation facilities of hardware MMUs. OSE 5.0 also provides new memory savings features, including a modular architecture that reduces static memory usage, and a dynamic software download mechanism that minimizes buffer usage.

OSE 5.0 also has new features that make it easier to configure, start up and use. Each board that OSE supports, for example, comes with a Software Reference System that provides turnkey build facilities. This system, which includes a build and configuration framework, board-specific drivers, a full-featured OSE sample system, and sample application modules, enables designers to bring up a full system in less than an hour without a debugger. OSE also supports dynamic OS and system configuration, which enables systems to determine their configuration during run time instead of compile time, and enables the configuration to be changed and the image updated while the system is running. To enhance reliability and portability, OSE 5.0 provides separate application and system programming interfaces.

OSE RTOS background OSE is a compact, pre-emptive, memory-protected, multi-processor RTOS optimized for distributed, fault-tolerant applications that demand the utmost in reliability, security and availability. OSE enhances reliability and availability by utilizing the target processor’s memory management unit to build a firewall between kernel and application processes, thereby preventing these processes from corrupting each other. OSE further enhances reliability and availability by providing automatic failure detection and supervision (health monitoring) of system processes and applications.

To streamline and simplify distributed communications, OSE’s Link Handler provides an application- and device-independent message-passing protocol that makes interprocess communications transparent to programs running on different CPUs. OSE also features a power management system that extends battery life, a crash-safe file system with flash support, and dynamic download capability, which enhances mobile device flexibility by enabling new applications to be downloaded to systems as they operate in the field.

Control Engineering Daily News DeskJim Montague, news editorjmontague@reedbusiness.com