TI-RTOS is an embedded tools ecosystem created and offered by

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American technology company headquartered in Dallas, Texas, that designs and manufactures semiconductors and various integrated circuits, which it sells to electronics designers and manufacturers globall ...

(TI) for use in a range of their

embedded system An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' as ...

processors. It includes a

real-time operating system A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which m ...

(RTOS) component named ''TI-RTOS Kernel'' (formerly named ''SYS/BIOS'', which evolved from ''DSP/BIOS''), networking connectivity stacks, power management,

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

s, instrumentation, and inter-processor communications like

DSP/BIOS Link DSP/BIOS Link or DSPLINK is an interprocessor or inter-process communication (IPC) scheme to pass messages and data in multiprocessing systems. In the case of the DaVinci digital signal processor (DSP) family from Texas Instruments, this scheme al ...

. It is

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...

, released under one of the

BSD licenses BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

. TI-RTOS can be used within TI's

Code Composer Studio Code Composer Studio (CCStudio or CCS) is an integrated development environment (IDE) to develop applications for Texas Instruments (TI) embedded processors. Texas Instruments embedded processors include TMS320 DSPs, OMAP system-on-a-chip, DaVin ...

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...

(IDE),

IAR Systems IAR Systems is a Swedish computer software company that offers development tools for embedded systems. IAR Systems was founded in 1983, and is listed on Nasdaq Nordic in Stockholm. IAR is an abbreviation of Ingenjörsfirma Anders Rundgren, which ...

' IAR Embedded Workbench, and the

GNU Compiler Collection The GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) is an optimizing compiler produced by the GNU Project supporting various programming languages, hardware architectures and operating systems. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) distributes GCC as free software ...

(GCC). Separate versions of TI-RTOS are provided to support TI's MSP43x (including MSP432), SimpleLink Wireless MCU, Sitara, Tiva C,

C2000 Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA; formerly known as Trans-European Trunked Radio), a European standard for a trunked radio system, is a professional mobile radio and two-way transceiver specification. TETRA was specifically designed for use by go ...

, and C6000 lines of embedded devices. TI-RTOS provides system services to an embedded application such as

preemptive multitasking In computing, preemption is the act of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming it at a later time. This interrupt is done by an external scheduler with no assistance or cooperation from the task. This preempt ...

memory management Memory management is a form of resource management applied to computer memory. The essential requirement of memory management is to provide ways to dynamically allocate portions of memory to programs at their request, and free it for reuse when ...

and real-time analysis. TI-RTOS can be used in different

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circu ...

s, with different processing and memory constraints. It is supported by

Secure Sockets Layer Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...

(SSL) and

Transport Layer Security Transport Layer Security (TLS) is a cryptographic protocol designed to provide communications security over a computer network. The protocol is widely used in applications such as email, instant messaging, and voice over IP, but its use in securi ...

(TLS)

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

such as

wolfSSL wolfSSL is a small, portable, embedded SSL/TLS library targeted for use by embedded systems developers. It is an open source implementation of TLS (SSL 3.0, TLS 1.0, 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and DTLS 1.0, 1.2, and 1.3) written in the C programming lan ...

History

The roots of TI-RTOS were originally developed by Spectron Microsystems (a subsidiary of

Dialogic Corporation Dialogic is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Parsippany, New Jersey, United States, with operations in over 25 countries. Dialogic provides a cloud-optimized communications technology for real-time communications me ...

) as the first RTOS developed specifically for

digital signal processor A digital signal processor (DSP) is a specialized microprocessor chip, with its architecture optimized for the operational needs of digital signal processing. DSPs are fabricated on MOS integrated circuit chips. They are widely used in audio si ...

s and was named ''SPOX''. Spectron eventually also developed a second product named ''BIOSuite'' that included a

real-time Real-time or real time describes various operations in computing or other processes that must guarantee response times within a specified time (deadline), usually a relatively short time. A real-time process is generally one that happens in defined ...

kernel Kernel may refer to: Computing * Kernel (operating system), the central component of most operating systems * Kernel (image processing), a matrix used for image convolution * Compute kernel, in GPGPU programming * Kernel method, in machine learnin ...

and various associated tools. Spectron Microsystems was eventually acquired by Texas Instruments and the ''SPOX'' and ''BIOSuite'' products were merged into one

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

product named ''DSP/BIOS''. The DSP/BIOS RTOS product underwent significant changes to its ''application programming interface'' (

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

) in version 6.0. With the release of version 6.3 in August 2010, ''DSP/BIOS'' was renamed ''SYS/BIOS'' to reflect its support for

microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs (processor cores) along with memory and programmable i ...

s beyond DSPs. With the release of version 6.40 in April 2014, SYS/BIOS was renamed ''TI-RTOS Kernel'' and made a component of the TI-RTOS product suite. TI-RTOS 1.00 was released initially in July 2012. for TI's microprocessors The 2.00 release of TI-RTOS in April 2014 completed the renaming process and integrated the TI-RTOS Kernel and other components under one software umbrella.

Component overview

TI-RTOS consists of these components, some of which are unavailable for all embedded target families: *''TI-RTOS Kernel'' – Embedded RTOS formerly named SYS/BIOS *''TI-RTOS Drivers and Board Initialization'' – Target-specific device drivers. Drivers include

Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

general-purpose input/output A general-purpose input/output (GPIO) is an uncommitted digital signal pin on an integrated circuit or electronic circuit (e.g. MCUs/ MPUs ) board which may be used as an input or output, or both, and is controllable by software. GPIOs have no ...

(GPIO),

I²C I2C (Inter-Integrated Circuit, ), alternatively known as I2C or IIC, is a synchronous, multi-controller/multi-target (master/slave), packet switched, single-ended, serial communication bus invented in 1982 by Philips Semiconductors. It is wide ...

I²S I²S (Inter-IC Sound, pronounced "eye-squared-ess"), is an electrical serial bus interface standard used for connecting digital audio devices together. It is used to communicate PCM audio data between integrated circuits in an electronic devic ...

pulse-width modulation Pulse-width modulation (PWM), or pulse-duration modulation (PDM), is a method of reducing the average power delivered by an electrical signal, by effectively chopping it up into discrete parts. The average value of voltage (and current) fed ...

(PWM),

Serial Peripheral Interface The Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) is a synchronous serial communication interface specification used for short-distance communication, primarily in embedded systems. The interface was developed by Motorola in the mid-1980s and has become a ...

(SPI),

universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter A universal asynchronous receiver-transmitter (UART ) is a computer hardware device for asynchronous serial communication in which the data format and transmission speeds are configurable. It sends data bits one by one, from the least significan ...

(UART), Universal Serial Bus (

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard that establishes specifications for cables, connectors and protocols for connection, communication and power supply (interfacing) between computers, peripherals and other computers. A broad v ...

Watchdog timer A watchdog timer (sometimes called a ''computer operating properly'' or ''COP'' timer, or simply a ''watchdog'') is an electronic or software timer that is used to detect and recover from computer malfunctions. Watchdog timers are widely used in ...

, and

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols, based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by radio wave ...

. *''TI-RTOS Network Services'' – Stacks to support the

Internet protocol suite The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suit ...

(TCP/IP),

Hypertext Transfer Protocol The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

(HTTP), and

(SSL) and

(TLS) protocols *''TI-RTOS Interprocessor Communication'' – APIs to support communication between TI's embedded processors (evolved from

) *''TI-RTOS Instrumentation'' – APIs and tools for

performance and behavior analysis *''TI-RTOS File System'' – APIs to support the

File Allocation Table File Allocation Table (FAT) is a file system developed for personal computers. Originally developed in 1977 for use on floppy disks, it was adapted for use on hard disks and other devices. It is often supported for compatibility reasons by ...

(FAT) file system

Licensing

Most of the TI-RTOS components are released under the

BSD License BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

. Any user can rebuild the kernel using the included source code.

RTOS kernel overview

Organization

The TI-RTOS Kernel is made up of a number of discrete components, called ''modules''. Each module can provide services via an API and is individually configurable. For example, system semaphores are provided by a module named ''ti.sysbios.knl.Semaphore''. A developer can choose whether this module is included in the runtime image or optimized out. If included, the user can configure various aspects of the Semaphore module, and instances of semaphores to be created on system start up. The module also provides an API so that semaphores can be created, posted, pended, and deleted as an embedded program runs.

Threading

TI-RTOS Kernel provides support for several different types of threads in an embedded system. * Hardware Interrupt (Hwi): support threads initiated by a hardware interrupt. * Software Interrupt (Swi): structured to be similar to Hwis, but allow processing to be deferred until after a hardware interrupt has completed. * Task: a discrete thread that can execute or block while waiting for an event to occur. * Idle: the lowest priority thread that only runs when no other thread is ready to execute.

Memory management

TI-RTOS Kernel provides tooling to set up an embedded system's memory map and allow memory buffers to be allocated and deallocated while the system runs. The type of memory manager used during runtime is configurable so that memory fragmentation can be minimized as needed.

Real-time debugging

TI-RTOS Kernel provides modules that allow it to provide information about how the system is executing. This includes how different threads are loading the CPU over time, and logging events as they occur in both the system application and within the TI-RTOS Kernel. Also, the Code Composer Studio IDE can take this logged data and graphically display it for analysis.

References

External links

TI-RTOS software page on TI website

TI-RTOS User's Guide (link to latest version)

TI-RTOS Downloads

TI-RTOS page on TI wiki

SYS/BIOS page on TI wiki
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sys Bios Texas Instruments Real-time operating systems ARM operating systems Software using the BSD license Microkernel-based operating systems Microkernels