Operating System Embedded
The Operating System Embedded (OSE) is a real-time embedded operating system created by the Swedish information technology company ENEA AB. Bengt Eliasson, who at the time was a consultant from ENEA with an assignment at Ericsson, wrote the basic parts of the kernel. The early version for the Zilog Z80 processor was named OS80.
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| Developer | ENEA AB |
|---|---|
| Written in | Assembly, C, C++ |
| OS family | Real-time embedded operating system |
| Working state | Current |
| Source model | Closed-source |
| Latest release | 5.9.1 / March 20, 2018 |
| Marketing target | Multi-core embedded systems |
| Available in | English |
| Platforms | ARM, PowerPC, MIPS |
| Kernel type | Microkernel |
| License | Proprietary |
| Official website | www |
Architecture and abilities
OSE uses events (named signals due to ENEA's telecom background) in the form of messages passed to and from processes in the system. Messages are stored in a queue attached to each process. A link handler mechanism allows signals to be passed between processes on separate machines, over a variety of transports. The OSE signalling mechanism formed the basis of an open-source inter-process kernel design project called LINX.
- Fault tolerant, distributed architecture
- Modular, layered microkernel architecture
- Multilevel process scheduling
- Event-driven, deterministic real-time response
- Asynchronous direct message-passing model
- Scalable hybrid multicore system exploiting the advantages from both asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) models
- Memory protection
- Centralized error handling and remediation
- Built-in task (process) monitoring and failure detection
- Dynamic, run-time program loading
- Power management with low-power sleep mode
- Demand paging support for optimizing random-access memory (RAM) use
- Comprehensive networking and security support
- Multiple file system choices including crash-safe, journaling file system
- Distributed system-level simulation
- Run mode monitor (RMM) for remote monitoring, tracing, profiling, and debugging
- Optima, an Eclipse-based integrated development environment and tools suite
Multicore Edition
Enea OSE Multicore Edition was released in 2009. It is based on the same microkernel architecture. The kernel design that combines the advantages of both traditional asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP).
The hybrid AMP–SMP kernel in OSE Multicore Edition is based on a number of:
- Essential services in OSE are implemented according to a microkernel model which allows IP stacks, file systems, application loaders, etc., to be located on different cores, while applications can access these services regardless of location in the system (location transparency).
- A kernel that instantiates a separate scheduler on each core with associated data structures to preserve determinism and realtime traits.
- User-defined process migration and load balancing based on low intrusion mechanisms to measure CPU load on each core.
- A lightweight kernel internal IPC mechanism called kernel events used to perform asynchronous, cross core transactions to avoid use of fine-granular locking designs, which has a detrimental effect on performance.
The Enea OSE family of RTOS features 3 OSs: OSE for ARM processors, PowerPC and MIPS, OSEck for various DSP's, and OSE Epsilon for minimal devices, written in pure assembly (ARM, ColdFire) .
Processor support
OSE supports many processors, mainly 32-bit:
