New 1.1. release of OpenVE for OpenComRTOS

Altreonic has released v. 1.1 of its OpenVE for OpenComRTOS. This version was improved to better support heterogeneous target systems and has an easier interface to the host server. The Win32 version is available free of charge from our download section. OpenVE now supports a growing number of embedded targets as well (in Single Processor and Multi-Processor versions).

The current list includes: Xilinx MicroBlaze, Leon3, ARM Cortex M3 and the multi-core XMOS

In a demo set-up, boards with all supported targets were seamlessly programmed and demonstrated.

You can experience this seamless heterogeneous real-time processing first hand. For 2995 euro we deliver a bundle containing OpenComRTOS for Win32 and ARM Cortex M3, both supported from within OpenVE, the Event Tracer and  a Luminary LM3S6965 development kit. Applications can be seamlessly distributed over the host PC and the ARM board out-of-the-box. See OpenComRTOS for ARM bundle for more details.

The most recent ports to ARM Cortex M3 and XMOS confirm the small code size and low data requirements. E.g. on the ARM a full application with all services requires not more than 3.5 KBytes memory for program and less than 2.5 KBytes for data. The MP version, including drivers and timer, requires just 2.3 Kbytes extra memory for program. The semaphore loops comes in at 52.7 microseconds (@ 50 MHz).

The port to the 32bit XMOS chip will still in development, is unique as well. The XMOS chip actually contains 4 CPU cores, each with 64 KBytes of local memory. Each core can support up to 4 hardware threads at 100 MHz, providing a total of 1600 Mips. On the XMOS chips these threads can also be programmed for I/O, e.g. a UART of Ethernet MAC. The architecture however allows us to assign these I/O threads to any node we want so that the total processing power is not effected by I/O operations. While on the XMOS chips all cores are connected through fast on-chip point-to-point "channels", the XMOS chip also has off-chip links so that the system can be scaled up !pr down) with as many processors as needed. On a single core, the semaphore loop on the XMOS chip comes in at 26.8 microseconds (@100 MHz). Total memory requirements in the XMOS also modest. A full OpenComRTOS application was measured to take on 7062 bytes of program memory.