Mentor Graphics has announced the Nucleus real time operating system (RTOS) targeting high-performance, next-generation applications for wearable embedded devices designed for medical, fitness, security, safety and other sectors. The introduction of new multicore system-on-chip (SoC) architectures targeting wearable devices with Internet of Things (IoT) features requires an operating system that has a framework tailored to meet new system requirements. The Nucleus RTOS framework for smart wearable devices connects to other smart devices, gateways, or directly to the cloud. Optimised for size, performance, and power efficiency in unicore or multicore SoCs, the Nucleus RTOS is the first embedded operating system to provide a power management and processor lifecycle framework to maximise wearable device battery life.
The Nucleus RTOS provides memory space partitioning in both high-performance microprocessor units (MPU) and resource-constrained microcontroller units (MCU) to support software updates and upgrades in deployed systems. The Nucleus RTOS includes a rich IPv4/v6 networking stack, M2M protocols, and security for IoT applications and cloud connectivity.
Multicore Framework for Inter-process Communication and Processor Life Cycle
Today’s wearable SoCs increasingly combine application-class and microcontroller-class cores onto a single device to consolidate heterogeneous operating environments within a single application. The Nucleus RTOS includes the embedded industry’s first complete heterogeneous multicore framework – a clean-room implementation of functionality of “virtIO”, “remoteproc”, and “rpmsg.” This framework enables developers to seamlessly integrate the Nucleus RTOS, Linux, and bare metal-based applications onto a single SoC including inter-process communication (IPC), resource sharing, and processor life cycle control for wearable devices. Developers can control the boot-up and shut-down of individual cores on an SoC, allowing wearable and IoT applications to maximise compute performance or minimise power consumption based on the use-case.
The Nucleus RTOS also incorporates a wide range of standards-compliant networking and communication protocols designed for wearable devices with support for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Bluetooth Low Energy, and 6LoWPAN over 802.15.4 on an array of supported chipsets.
Nucleus Power Management Framework Extends Battery Life
Battery life is critical for connected devices and the new generation of wearable products places new demands on power consumption reduction due to shrinking hardware resources and increasing software complexity. Built from the ground up, the Nucleus power management framework manages the power state for each peripheral, set of peripherals, or the entire wearable system by using simple high-level application programming interface (API) calls. When changing power states, the power management framework allows coordinated control of processor modes, operating frequencies, and peripheral device operation.
Space Partitioning for Device Provisioning
The Nucleus process model is a lightweight approach that provides space partitioning to create protected memory regions that isolate and protect application, middleware and kernel subsystems. Space partitioning enhances reliability and provides the framework to load new applications using cloud services, or to partition large algorithms into smaller components using a just-in-time (JIT) methodology. For devices with limited memory resources, the Nucleus process model efficiently uses memory by loading and unloading software to limit the resident executing code to only the modules necessary at any given moment in time.
Qt Framework for Graphical User Interface Development
The Qt framework for the Nucleus RTOS improves the user interface (UI) development workflow based on the tight integration of Mentor Embedded tools to provide an environment to create differentiating graphics optimized for the memory footprint requirements for wearable devices. Mentor Embedded tools include integrated software performance for Qt analysis to maximize performance and minimise graphics start-up.
