The following was written in April 2018 at the “other” blog platform. This has some relevance as we will be officially releasing “JumpStart IoT” which includes REIXS, our preemptive multi-priority RTOS.
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If one examines the 2017 Embedded Market Study Survey: (https://m.eet.com/media/1246048/2017…rket-study.pdf), the use of RTOS vs. no RTOS (page 54) has maintained a fairly consistent 70% (RTOS) to 30% (no RTOS) split for the last 5 years (and probably earlier as well). During the same time frame, the use of open source RTOS increased from 30% to 40%, while the use of commercial RTOS dropped from 40% to 30%.
Digging a bit deeper, the most common reason selected for NOT using (a commercial) RTOS was “the current solution works fine” (AKA inertia, a whopping 68% of the response), with the second most common reason selected being “too expensive” (coming in at 35%.)
Of the reasons to choose an RTOS, whether commercial or open source, the top 4 survey answers were:
- Availability of full source code (39%)
- No royalties (30%)
- Compatibility with other software and systems (27%)
- Availability of tech support (27%)
However, the most telling information is perhaps found in the following graphic:
In other words:
- A similar percentage of developers have been using RTOS in the last 5 years
- The use of open source RTOS has increased somewhat, at the expense of commercial RTOS
- The main selling points of open source RTOS are the availability of source code and no royalties
- … and in the end, open source RTOS really just means embedded Linux and FreeRTOS
No wonder Amazon turned FreeRTOS into “Amazon FreeRTOS” for an undisclosed sum.In my following posts, I will be discussing the pros and cons of different RTOS, as well as describe ImageCraft’s new RTOS REXIS (Real-time EXecutive for Intelligent Systems), which is a part of our JumpStart Embedded Suite. Stay tuned!