It’s not the first time this has occurred, but it is the latest—a previously commercial real-time operating system is now being offered as open source. In this case, it’s SMX from Micro Digital. 

If you’re wondering, like I was, where the company would choose to go this route, check out this week’s Embedded Executives podcast with Ralph More, the Founder and President of Micro Digital.

There is a great deal of information about how to write reliable code, but very little about how to pick a reliable RTOS and how to use it reliably. An erroneous concept has flourished for decades that “since all RTOSs are equivalent”, the simplest one will do. Whereas this might be an acceptable idea when the alternative is bare metal, it is not acceptable for the complex embedded and IoT systems that are being developed today.

IoT devices are not actually new. They are just embedded systems mistakenly connected to the Internet. In what follows, I use the term “embedded system” instead of “IoT device” since it is more general.

This is the fourth part of a four-part series of articles presenting a unique product MPU Plus? and a methodology for using the Cortex-M MPU to achieve improved MCU security.

This is the third part of a four-part series of articles presenting a unique product MPU Plus? and a methodology for using the Cortex-M MPU to achieve improved MCU security.