“With the increasing complexity and horsepower of embedded computers, higher end OS technologies have become a necessity, in order to take advantage of the full features of the system and to provide the application sophistication that has come to be expected. Embedded systems now commonly are based on 100+ MHz 486/586/Pentium class CPUs; and many incorporate sophisticated GUI interfaces, intranet/internet… connectivity, high capacity Flash memory “solid state disks”, and so forth. On top of this, there's a steadily escalating rate of hardware (and chipset) innovation and introduction, with the result that it's increasingly challenging for OS/RTOS suppliers to keep up with user demand that the latest devices be supported. The result of all this, is that the number of practical OS/RTOS options — except for low end microcontroller-level embedded systems — is rapidly narrowing.”

The result: there are now effectively just three principal OS choices for most embedded or real-time systems (not counting the deeply embedded microcontroller-level apps):

• Windows (98, NT, CE)
  
• Proprietary RTOSes (QNX, VxWorks, Lynx, …)
  
• Linux (several major and many minor distributions)

This online slide presentation, given by LinuxDevices.com founder Rick Lehrbaum at LinuxWorld Expo (February 4, 2000), reviews the embedded market opportunity for Linux and outlines the options available.

* View Slide Presentation *

 
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