eCosCentric Ltd. announced the release of eCos 2.0 Beta, the latest version of the eCos real-time operating system. According to the announcement, the 2.0 beta is a “substantial release, which reinforces eCos as the premier royalty-free open source RTOS.”

Available for free download or on CDROM, the eCos 2.0 Beta is said to support more than 80 evaluation and development platforms, and now provides support for the following processors: ARM (including StrongARM and XScale), SuperH, Intel x86 (IA32), PowerPC, MIPS, Matsushita AM3x, Motorola 68K/Coldfire, SPARC, Hitachi H8/300H, and NEC V850.

Enhancements included in the 2.0 Beta release include . . .

• Updates to RedBoot, the open source bootstrap and debug firmware based on eCos
  
• A choice of TCP/IP stacks including options for BOOTP/DHCP, DNS, TFTP/FTP, SNMP, IPv6 and HTTPD
  
• RAM, ROM and flash file systems
  
• Power management support
  
• USB slave support
  
• A POSIX-compatible API
  
• Symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) support

eCosCentric says the 2.0 Beta is also the first release under a new license “which provides compatibility with the GNU General Public License (GPL), while also allowing application source code to remain proprietary.”

In addition to the eCos 2.0 Beta, eCosCentric is also providing a set of pre-built GNU toolchains for all the major architectures supported by eCos and RedBoot.

“Embedded software developers now have an easy route to evaluate eCos on both Windows and Linux hosts for the target platform of their choice,” explained Jonathan Larmour, chief eCos maintainer and eCosCentric staff member. “Many eCos users have experienced difficulties in generating the toolchains necessary to build and debug eCos applications — so we decided to make things easier.”

“We are delighted to be supporting the ongoing development of eCos and RedBoot,” commented eCosCentric managing director Alex Schuilenburg. “The combination of eCos, RedBoot, and our commercial development and support offerings allows OEMs and semiconductor manufacturers to take maximum advantage of the stability, flexibility and cost-effectiveness afforded by open source software in their embedded designs.”

eCosCentric specializes in eCos and RedBoot support, development, and consulting services, and is staffed by some of the original eCos creators. The company, located in Cambridge UK, was founded in April 2002 (around the time that Red Hat dropped its eCos development activites).

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.