Products and Services for Embedded Systems

ECROS Operating System

ECROS is the Embedded, Collaborative Realtime Operating System.  It is designed for use in low cost embedded systems where read/write memory is often limited.  ECROS provides multi-tasking services without allocating a software stack to each task, thus dramatically reducing memory use for non-trivial numbers of tasks.  Tasks are scheduled according to priority, with tasks at the same priority scheduled on a first-come-first-served basis.  The work of each task is carried out by a user-supplied C language function which must return to yield control back to the scheduler.  Thus, the tasks collaborate on scheduling, giving up the CPU by design, rather than being preempted by the scheduler.  As well as eliminating the stack-for-each-task problem, this design has many other benefits which are fully exploited by ECROS to increase efficiency and ease of use.

Key features of ECROS are:

• Priority-Based Multi-Tasking in Limited Read/Write Memory Systems
• Inter-Task Communication by Events and Messages
• One-Shot and Repetitive Timers with Configurable Resolution
• No Semaphores, Mutexes or Critical Regions Necessary †
• Dynamic Binding of Functions to Tasks for Elegant State Machine Implementations
• Buffered, Interrupt-Driven Stream I/O for UARTs
• Stream Driver for Popular HD44780U-based Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs)
• OsFPrintfLite() saves kilobytes of code space over ZiLOG library functions
• Task Profiler to Measure System Performance
• Thoroughly Documented API

† Tasks do not need to be concerned about interference from other tasks since they retain the CPU until they voluntarily give it up.  However, interrupt service routines still preempt tasks and critical regions may be needed to temporarily disable interrupts depending on the system design.

ECROS Application Programming Interface

As in other operating systems, applications gain access to the services of ECROS using an Application Programming Interface (API).  This consists mainly of functions plus a few global variables.

Getting ECROS

Click here for information on ECROS pricing and for no-cost, time-limited evaluations

Questions and Answers

Do you have questions about ECROS?  Perhaps they are already answered here.  If not, please contact ECROS Technology.

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