ChibiOS/RT

Last updated
ChibiOS/RT
ChibiOS Embeddedware Official Logo.jpg
Developer Giovanni Di Sirio
Written in C, assembly language
OS family Real-time operating systems
Working stateCurrent
Source model Open source
Initial release2007;16 years ago (2007)
Latest release 21.11.3 / December 29, 2022;11 months ago (2022-12-29)
Repository
Marketing target Embedded systems
Available in English
Platforms Intel 80386; ARM 7, 9, Cortex: M0, M3, M4, M7; [1] PowerPC, e200z; Atmel AVR; TI MSP430; STM8; Freescale Coldfire; Renesas H8S
Kernel type Microkernel
License GPL3 or proprietary
Official website www.chibios.org

ChibiOS/RT is a compact and fast [2] real-time operating system supporting multiple architectures and released under a mix of the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL3) and the Apache License 2.0 (depending on module). It is developed by Giovanni Di Sirio.

Contents

Commercial licenses are available from ChibiOS. Additional products include ChibiOS/HAL, a hardware abstraction layer compatible with ChibiOS/RT, and ChibiStudio, a free integrated development environment based on Eclipse, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the OpenOCD Joint Test Action Group (JTAG) debugging pod.

Metrics

ChibiOS/RT is designed for embedded applications on microcontrollers of 8-, 16-, and 32-bits. Size and execution efficiency are the main project goals. [3] As reference, the kernel size can range from a minimum of 1.2 KiB up to a maximum of 5.5 KiB with all the subsystems activated on a STM32 Cortex-M3 processor. The kernel can achieve over 220,000 created/terminated threads per second and can perform a context switch in 1.2 microseconds on an STM32 @ 72 MHz. Similar metrics for all the supported platforms are included in the source code distribution as test reports.

Features

The ChibiOS/RT microkernel supports:

All system objects, such as threads, semaphores, timers, etc., can be created and deleted at runtime. There is no upper limit except for the available memory. To increase system reliability, the kernel architecture is entirely static, a memory allocator is not needed (but is available as an option), and there are no data structures with upper size limits like tables or arrays. The system application programming interfaces (APIs) are designed to not have error conditions such as error codes or exceptions.

The RTOS is designed for applications on embedded systems (devices) and includes demo applications for various microcontrollers:

Contributed ports are also available for the Coldfire and H8S families. [5]

ChibiOS/RT has also been ported to the Raspberry Pi [6] and the following device drivers have been implemented: Port (GPIO), Serial, GPT (General-Purpose Timer), I2C, SPI and PWM.

It is also possible to run the kernel in a Win32 process in a software I/O emulation mode, allowing easy application development without the need for physical hardware. An example is included for MinGW compiler.

uGFX

ChibiOS/RT is fully supported by the graphical user interface (GUI) toolkit µGFX, formerly named ChibiOS/GFX.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Di Sirio, Giovanni. "The ARMv7-M Port". ChibiOS.org. Retrieved 20 August 2020. This port includes support for all devices using one of the following cores: Cortex-M3, Cortex-M4, Cortex-M7
  2. ↑ RTOS performance data on emb4fun.de Archived 2013-01-11 at archive.today
  3. ↑ "ChibiOS/RT statistics on ohloh.net". Archived from the original on 2014-04-14. Retrieved 2010-01-30.
  4. ↑ "A detailed explanation of multithreading in ChibiOS/RT". Archived from the original on 2018-04-23. Retrieved 2016-11-03.
  5. ↑ Additional supported architectures on emb4fun.de Archived 2013-01-11 at archive.today
  6. ↑ "ChibiOS/RT on the Raspberry Pi".
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