The eXtreme Minimal Kernel (XMK) is a real-time operating system (RTOS) that is designed for minimal RAM/

ROM Rom, or ROM may refer to: Biomechanics and medicine * Risk of mortality, a medical classification to estimate the likelihood of death for a patient * Rupture of membranes, a term used during pregnancy to describe a rupture of the amniotic sac * R ...

use. It achieves this goal, though it is almost entirely written in the

C programming language ''The C Programming Language'' (sometimes termed ''K&R'', after its authors' initials) is a computer programming book written by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, the latter of whom originally designed and implemented the language, as well as ...

. As a consequence it can be easily ported to any 8-, 16-, or

32-bit In computer architecture, 32-bit computing refers to computer systems with a processor, memory, and other major system components that operate on data in 32-bit units. Compared to smaller bit widths, 32-bit computers can perform large calculation ...

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 ...

. XMK comes as two independent packages: the XMK Scheduler that contains the core kernel, everything necessary to run a multithreaded embedded application, and the Application Programming Layer (APL) that provides higher level functions atop the XMK Scheduler API. The XMK distribution contains no

standard libraries In computer programming, a standard library is the library made available across implementations of a programming language. These libraries are conventionally described in programming language specifications; however, contents of a language's as ...

such as libc that should be part of the

development tools A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can ...

for target systems.

External links

XMK: eXtreme Minimal Kernel
project home page (broken link)
Windows Evolution Over Timeline
Real-time operating systems Embedded operating systems {{operating-system-stub