QNX

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QNX
logo
developer Gordon Bell , Dan Dodge , Blackberry
License (s) Proprietary
Current  version 7.0 (2017)
ancestry QNX
Architecture (s) MIPS , PowerPC , SH-4 , ARM , StrongARM , XScale , x86
www.qnx.com/products/rtos

QNX is a proprietary POSIX -enabled unixoides real-time operating system , which primarily to market embedded systems aims.

history

Historical logo

While still students at the University of Waterloo , Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge decided in 1980 to write their own real-time operating system with a microkernel . Not interested in user software, they stayed away from the desktop market. They founded Quantum software still in that year and brought 1982, the first version called QUNIX for Intel 8088 - CPUs out. Shortly thereafter, the operating system was renamed QNX and is therefore sometimes still pronounced Kjunix , especially in English-speaking countries .

QNX was first chosen around 1985 as the operating system for the Unisys ICON , the standard workstation computer at universities in Ontario at the time . In the following period, however, QNX quickly spread in the market of embedded systems and was transferred to various platforms .

When the market began to focus more and more on POSIX models at the end of the 1990s , the kernel was rewritten to make it SMP and POSIX compatible from the ground up.

QNX Neutrino , the result of these efforts, has been offered commercially since 2001 by the company , which has since been renamed QNX Software Systems . This version usually contains an integrable graphical user interface ( GUI ), called Photon microGUI , a development environment based on Eclipse , various GNU tools, a browser ( Mozilla or Voyager) and an HTTP server .

Neutrino should also be used temporarily as the basis of a new Amiga system. Amiga Inc. abandoned these plans in favor of its own operating system approach called Amiga OS4 ( AmigaOne ) for PowerPC .

QNX became part of the Harman International group on October 27, 2004 .

The source code of the kernel has been publicly available since September 12, 2007 . This makes the QNX development process traceable. The new license model also allows the operating system to be used free of charge for non-commercial use. The new license also allows you to change the kernel for your own purposes; however, this change may not be published further without written approval. This is enshrined in the hybrid software model designed by QNX .

QNX is also used in automotive engineering. The BMW iDrive navigation system CIC was programmed on the basis of QNX . The navigation systems of all model series from September 2008 are equipped with this. The navigation and infotainment systems of many vehicles of the VAG Group ( Volkswagen , Audi , SEAT , Škoda ) also use QNX as the operating system, which is specially tailored to the automotive sector in Nvidia and Texas Instruments processors running.

On April 9, 2010, Research In Motion announced that it would buy QNX from Harman International Industries. On September 28, 2010 Research In Motion brought the Blackberry PlayBook based on QNX onto the market, 2013-2016 smartphones with the Blackberry 10 based on QNX were also offered. Integrated compatibility libraries made it possible to adapt Android applications to QNX with very little effort.

description

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

As a microkernel - operating system QNX is based on the idea of letting the majority to run the system in the form of processes. Each process runs in its own memory area protected by the MMU of the processor - regardless of whether it is an application or a driver. This makes troubleshooting easier for developers: If process A accidentally tries to overwrite data or code from process B, the QNX microkernel is informed of this via the MMU and process A terminates, while process B remains untouched. This ability is the main differentiator compared to more traditional monolithic kernels where the operating system is a large program with special capabilities. In the case of QNX, the microkernel allows the user (developer) to omit any functionality that is not required by him (e.g. audio, graphics or any other system parts) without even having to touch the kernel.

Another advantage of the microkernel architecture is the possibility of exchanging essential system drivers during operation. With a correspondingly careful approach (taking the dependencies into account), even system components can be replaced in this way without restarting the entire system. In general, a system consists of a very large number of individual modules, each of which is dynamically loaded. In order to enable the most efficient communication possible between the processes despite the memory protection by the MMU, QNX has contained extensive mechanisms for process communication ( IPC ) since the first version . In the course of the development of the different versions, these mechanisms were continuously expanded.

Neutrino was ported to many other architectures and now runs on almost every modern CPU that is used in the embedded systems market. These are u. a. the x86 family, MIPS , PowerPC , SH-4 , ARM , StrongARM and xScale .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ BlackBerry QNX Launches its Most Advanced and Secure Embedded Software Platform for Autonomous Drive and Connected Cars , press release of January 4, 2017.
  2. ↑ Announcement for the publication of the QNX source texts
  3. ↑ Hybrid Software Model
  4. ↑ CCC to be replaced by CIC . In: motor-talk.de forum . November 12, 2006.
  5. ^ The Globe and Mail