The chosen operating
environment for IoT device is a significant duty that will definitely
impact your firmware development approach and your whole project’s success. I
will give you an overview of several operating environments that you can
consider in making your choice and recommendation in terms of examples.
As IoT (Internet of
things) takes off, forming an appropriate selection is considered crucial.
Following are some of the operating environments,
·
Bare
metal, including event-driven and super loop.
·
Full-featured
and embedded.
·
Abstract
and virtual.
Bare Metal
This sort of operating system implies that
firmware is operating directly on the hardware of processors, without the
advantage of the previous OS of a certain category. Moreover, there are various
architectures similar to bare metal, including event-driven and super loop.
Super Loop
The super loop architecture performs several
tasks in the applications, where the tasks’ order can be defined dynamically or
statically selected at runtime. This sort of style is considered cooperative.
Event-Driven
The architecture of event-driven style for the
bare metal environment is opposite to super loop. Everything is performed directly
to hardware interrupts, with very little or no code in the main loop.
Embedded and Full-featured OS
Embedded OS
Several embedded OS are available nowadays,
both open-source and commercial. Few embedded OS allows guaranteed response
time to events. However, several are designed to operate on small processors,
involving 8-bit architecture with little memory. Others are designed to operate on large processors. No matter the complexity or
size of the embedded OS or processor, there are advantages to have the task
scheduler and other basic services. You can implement it if your required
functionality is to promote maintenance and ease of development.
Full-featured OS
On a bigger IoT scale, full-featured OS
such as Linux can be utilized. Suppose your required functionality requires
processing the power and memory footprints of modern application processors. In
that case, you can operate a full-feature OS and get the benefits of great
services.
Virtual or
Abstracted Environment
It is worth noting that you may reach a
higher-level that facilitates (and limits) your efforts of development.This
happens when you select an important core hardware component with a firmware-based processor that gives you a completely abstract environment that
allows you to develop software through advanced features and services.
This can be in the form of a virtual
machine (such as Java virtual machines) or an interpreter (Python). I have seen
many services in the market, such as cellular radio modules
It can also be like a domain-specific virtual
environment. Embedded One has shaped various virtual environment for embedded devices, each with its custom programming,
virtual machines, and support tools.
In certain areas, such as audio and video
products, each example has given developers an easier and faster time to market.
Conclusion
You made it to the end, great! I hope you
got the answers to your queries. Choosing a suitable operating environment for
metal/firmware solutions can influence your time to get your product to market
quickly will help you get successful.
At Embedded One, they have
been assisting clients do that for several years. You can contact
Embedded One to chat about your project.
