 | |
| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Embedded and Real-time Software |
| Founded | 2000 |
| Headquarters | Hillsboro, Oregon, US 45°31′52″N122°52′53″W / 45.531°N 122.8814°W Coordinates: 45°31′52″N122°52′53″W / 45.531°N 122.8814°W |
| Products | iRMX, INtime, and eVM |
| Website | www.tenasys.com |
TenAsys (rhymes with tenacious) is a privately owned company providing real-time software and services based on the x86 Intel Architecture and Microsoft Windows operating system.
The company was founded in 2000 as a spin-off of RadiSys Corporation to exploit the RTOS technology based on the iRMX and INtime for Windows products originally developed by Intel Corporation. RadiSys acquired the iRMX and INtime RTOS technology when they purchased Intel's Multibus division in 1996. [1] [2] [3]
RadiSys released version 1.0 of the INtime RTOS in June, 1997. [4] The product was selected as one of two finalists in the EDN 1997 "Innovation of the Year" embedded development category. [5]
Effective 2000 iRMX III is supported, maintained, and licensed worldwide by TenAsys Corporation, under an exclusive licensing arrangement with Intel.
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TenAsys develops real-time operating system (RTOS) products designed to merge two separate computing platforms into one. Specifically, their products provide a means by which an RTOS can run in parallel with Windows on a standard PC platform. Their products are specific to the x86 Intel architecture.
iRMX is a real-time operating system designed specifically for use with the Intel 8080 and Intel 8086 family of processors. It is an acronym for Real-time Multitasking eXecutive. Intel developed iRMX in the late 1970s and originally released it in 1980 to support and create demand for their processors and Multibus system platforms. [6]
iRMX for Windows provides legacy support for existing applications based on the iRMX III real-time operating system and the iRMX for Windows RTOS produced by Intel beginning in 1992.
The iRMX for Windows RTOS loads and runs on a standard Windows system. Upon initialization, it sets up a separate execution environment, takes over the CPU, and encapsulates Windows as the lowest priority iRMX task. The iRMX operating system scheduler then determines which tasks will run; whenever a real-time task is ready to run, it preempts Windows, handles all real-time activities, and then resumes Windows (the lowest priority iRMX task) after all real-time activities have completed.
Like iRMX for Windows, the INtime RTOS also installs on a standard Windows system. Once installed, the INtime RTOS schedules all real-time processes to run first, at a higher priority than Windows. The INtime RTOS runs as a separate, independent kernel outside of the Windows kernel, without modifying the Windows kernel, drivers, or applications.
Real-time processes run on the INtime kernel, and non-real-time processes run on Windows. Windows application threads communicate with their real time counterparts on the INtime kernel through a special API that facilitates coordination and data sharing.
The eVM virtualization platform provides a virtual machine that hosts real-time and embedded operating systems running alongside Microsoft Windows. The eVM platform requires Intel virtualization technology (or Intel VT) in order to operate. The guest OS that runs within the VMM runs in parallel with Windows, on an industry-standard, PC-compatible, multi-core platform. [7]
Legacy I/O can be emulated using Intel VT. Virtual communication channels, such as a virtual Ethernet or a virtual serial link, provide a means for embedded applications running on the VMM to coordinate with Windows applications.
Direct hardware (access to I/O) and deterministic timing (interrupt latency) needs are addressed by giving the guest OS direct access to time-critical hardware. I/O is assigned exclusively to each guest OS so existing native device drivers have direct access to real hardware.
TenAsys RTOS tools are integrated into the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE.
In computing, a "virtual machine" (VM) is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide the functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardware, software, or a combination of the two. Virtual machines differ and are organized by their function, shown here:
Microware Systems Corporation was an American software company based in Clive, Iowa, that produced the OS-9 real-time operating system.
VxWorks is a real-time operating system developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, deterministic performance and, in many cases, safety and security certification for industries such as aerospace, defense, medical devices, industrial equipment, robotics, energy, transportation, network infrastructure, automotive, and consumer electronics.
An embedded operating system is an operating system for embedded computer systems. Embedded operating systems are computer systems designed to increase functionality and reliability for achieving a specific task. Resource efficiency comes at the cost of losing some functionality or granularity that larger computer operating systems provide, including functions that may not be used by the specialized applications run. Depending on the method used for multitasking, this type of OS is frequently considered a real-time operating system or RTOS. Embedded systems are mostly used as Real-time operating systems.
Versatile Real-Time Executive (VRTX) is a real-time operating system (RTOS) developed and marketed by the company Mentor Graphics. VRTX is suitable for both traditional board-based embedded systems and system on a chip (SoC) architectures. It has been superseded by the Nucleus RTOS.
MontaVista Software is a company that develops embedded Linux system software, development tools, and related software. Its products are made for other corporations developing embedded systems such as automotive electronics, communications equipment, mobile phones, and other electronic devices and infrastructure.
Wind River Systems, also known as Wind River, is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems software, industry-specific software, simulation technology, development tools and middleware.
Real-time Multitasking eXecutive (iRMX) is a real-time operating system designed for use with the Intel 8080 and 8086 family of processors.
A hypervisor is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called a host machine, and each virtual machine is called a guest machine. The hypervisor presents the guest operating systems with a virtual operating platform and manages the execution of the guest operating systems. Unlike an emulator, the guest executes most instructions on the native hardware. Multiple instances of a variety of operating systems may share the virtualized hardware resources: for example, Linux, Windows, and macOS instances can all run on a single physical x86 machine. This contrasts with operating-system–level virtualization, where all instances must share a single kernel, though the guest operating systems can differ in user space, such as different Linux distributions with the same kernel.
Multibus is a computer bus standard used in industrial systems. It was developed by Intel Corporation and was adopted as the IEEE 796 bus.
FreeRTOS is a real-time operating system kernel for embedded devices that has been ported to 35 microcontroller platforms. It is distributed under the MIT License.
PikeOS is a commercial, hard real-time operating system (RTOS) that offers a separation kernel based hypervisor with multiple logical partition types for many other operating systems (OS), each called a GuestOS, and applications. It enables users to build certifiable smart devices for the Internet of things (IoT) according to the high quality, safety and security standards of different industries. For safety and security critical real-time applications on controller-based systems without memory management unit (MMU) but with memory protection unit (MPU) PikeOS for MPU is available.
The following is a timeline of virtualization development. In computing, virtualization is the use of a computer to simulate another computer. Through virtualization, a host simulates a guest by exposing virtual hardware devices, which may be done through software or by allowing access to a physical device connected to the machine.
Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization hides the physical characteristics of a computing platform from the users, presenting instead an abstract computing platform. At its origins, the software that controlled virtualization was called a "control program", but the terms "hypervisor" or "virtual machine monitor" became preferred over time.
TI-RTOS is an embedded tools ecosystem created and offered by Texas Instruments (TI) for use in a range of their embedded system processors. It includes a real-time operating system (RTOS) component named TI-RTOS Kernel, networking connectivity stacks, power management, file systems, instrumentation, and inter-processor communications like DSP/BIOS Link. It is free and open-source software, released under a BSD license.
LynxSecure is a least privilege real-time separation kernel hypervisor from Lynx Software Technologies designed for safety and security critical applications found in military, avionic, industrial, and automotive markets.
An embedded hypervisor is a hypervisor that supports the requirements of embedded systems.
The INtime Real Time Operating System (RTOS) family is based on a 32-bit RTOS conceived to run time-critical operations cycle-times as low as 50μs. INtime RTOS runs on single-core, hyper-threaded, and multi-core x86 PC platforms from Intel and AMD. It supports two binary compatible usage configurations; INtime for Windows, where the INtime RTOS runs alongside Microsoft Windows®, and INtime Distributed RTOS, where INtime runs one.
In computing, a system virtual machine is a virtual machine (VM) that provides a complete system platform and supports the execution of a complete operating system (OS). These usually emulate an existing architecture, and are built with the purpose of either providing a platform to run programs where the real hardware is not available for use, or of having multiple instances of virtual machines leading to more efficient use of computing resources, both in terms of energy consumption and cost effectiveness, or both. A VM was originally defined by Popek and Goldberg as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine".