Percepio to support PX5 RTOS
The industrial-grade PX5 real time operating system (RTOS) has been established by Bill Lamie, the former chief technology officer of Express Logic and architect of the Nucleus and ThreadX (Azure RTOS) operating systems.
PX5 is the fifth generation RTOS designed for demanding embedded applications. It features a native implementation of the industry standard POSIX pThreads API (application programming interface) and security features. In addition to the native POSIX pThread support with semaphores and message queues, the PX5 RTOS also offers real-time extensions such as event flags, fast queues, tick timers, memory management, and more.
PX5 enables a wide range of software stacks, both open source and commercial, to run on real-time embedded IoT platforms. All of this results reduces time-to-market, improved firmware quality, and portability across platforms that help enhance device maker’s firmware development investment, explained Percepio. The RTOS will integrate Percepio’s Tracealyzer trace recorder, and Percepio will support the new PX5 RTOS with a commercially available version.
“PX5 RTOS is purpose-built to deliver benefits across all IoT sectors including commercial and safety critical applications,” said Bill Lamie, President, PX5. He described Percepio as a leader in embedded run-time system visualisation. “It’s hard to correct an issue if you can’t see it,” he reasoned. “With Tracealyzer, developers can see exactly what is taking place before a system crash. Developers can also leverage this visualisation to better understand the firmware, which makes it easier to enhance and optimize its operation,” he said.
“Being part of the launch of PX5 is exciting for Percepio,” says Johan Kraft, founder and CTO of Percepio. He believed the pThreads tool, and when combined with the other features in PX5, Kraft said it will supercharge the ability of Tracealyzer to monitor the performance of software running on all kinds of embedded systems across the IoT.
The trace recorder in Tracealyzer 4.6 is designed to be easy to port to platforms such as PX5 to provide efficient monitoring of deployed IoT systems and tracing of multi-core systems. It allows developers to capture long software traces, spanning hours or even days, for example for burn-in testing or profiling, or when looking for rare errors.
A trace snapshot feature also works with DevAlert, Percepio’s cloud service for monitoring deployed IoT devices. DevAlert customers can see their device issues in the field and download traces of the issues into Tracealyzer for easier debugging.
