MicroC/OS-II Features / Benefits

Features

µC/OS-II, The Real-Time Kernel is a portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel for microprocessors and microcontrollers. µC/OS-II can manage up to 63 application tasks and provides the following services:

• Semaphores
• Event Flags
• Mutual Exclusion Semaphores (to reduce priority inversions)
• Message Mailboxes
• Message Queues
• Task Management (Create, Delete, Change Priority, Suspend/Resume etc.)
• Fixed Sized Memory Block management
• Time Management

Large Number of Ports

µC/OS-II runs on a large number of processor architectures and ports are available, including most of the Cogent single board computer products, and the sources build with GNU X-Tools™, the most widely used open source embedded development tools. The vast number of ports should assure you that µC/OS-II is truly VERY portable and thus will most likely be ported to new processors as they become available.

Explanation of Internals

The internals of µC/OS-II are described in the book: "MicroC/OS-II, The Real-Time Kernel" which is now available worldwide from most technical bookstores and through Microcross.

FAA Certification

A validation suite has been developed for µC/OS-II and provides all the documentation necessary to prove that µC/OS-II is suitable for Safety Critical Systems common to Aviation and Medical products. Although this feature may not be applicable to your needs, it does prove that µC/OS-II is a VERY robust RTOS.

MISRA C Compliance

µC/OS-II is now 99% compliant with the Motor Industry Software Reliability Association (MISRA) C Coding Standards. These standards were created by MISRA to improve the reliability and predictability of C programs in critical automotive systems. Members of the MISRA consortium include Delco Electronics, Ford Motor Company, Jaguar Cars Ltd., Lotus Engineering, Lucas Electronics, Rolls-Royce, Rover Group Ltd., and other firms and universities dedicated to improving safety and reliability in automotive electronics. Full details of this standard can be obtained directly from the MISRA web site, http://www.misra.org.uk. A detailed MicroC/OS-II compliance matrix describing all of MISRA's 127 C Coding Rules is available from the Micrium web site. This continues the quality focus for MicroC/OS-III. Customers demand that their RTOS performs reliably in safety-critical environments.

Small Footprint

µC/OS-II can be scaled to only contain the features you need for your application and thus provide a small footprint. Depending on the processor, µC/OS-II can be reduced to a little over 2K bytes of code space and 200 bytes of data space (excluding stacks).

Source Code

µC/OS-II comes with ALL the source code. In fact, the source code is probably the cleanest and most consistent code of any RTOS. All services provided by µC/OS-II starts with the prefix 'OS'. This makes it easier to know that the functions refer to kernel services in your application. Also, the services are neatly grouped by categories: OSMbox???() relate to message mailboxes, OSQ???() relate to message queues, OSSem???() relate to semaphore management etc.

Performance

The execution time for most of the services provided by µC/OS-II is both constant and deterministic. This means that the execution times do not depend on the number of tasks running in your application. µC/OS-II is also very fast. The scheduler in µC/OS-II contains only four simple lines of C.

Large User Base

µC/OS-II has been used in hundreds of products from companies all around the world.

Colleges and Universities

Many colleges and Universities around the world are also using µC/OS-II in courses teaching about real-time systems. This ensures that new Engineers are trained and ready to use µC/OS-II in your products.