Wind River, Linux, and eCos
Dway,
I agree with you regarding Linux probably being too big and clunky to put in toasters but it does seems quite suitable for set-top boxes (eg. Tivo), specialized servers (eg. Cobalt), internet appliances, and their ilk.
As far as RTOS's go, have you looked at eCos(http://www.cygnus.com/ecos/)? My guess is that they are much more of a threat to Wind River than Linux. Cygnus designed it from the ground up as an open source RTOS and built it in a quite modular way to make it easy to include only OS features actually needed in an application. They also stressed portability. Since one of their main lines of business was porting the compiler GCC to a bunch of embedded processors they should be competent at that. Unlike Linux, I don't believe most development is done by the mongrel hordes but rather is done internally at Cygnus. I think Cygnus (don't know about Red Hat) was using the open source aspect to gain market share by eliminating lock in (sort of an anti-gorilla!) rather than for purely philosophical reasons. I have no idea how it is doing in the market, though, and would be very interested if anybody else does. They've got endorsements from a bunch of heavyweights on their site (http://www.cygnus.com/ecos/micro.html) including: Arm, Fujitsu, Mips, Motorola, NEC, Oki, Panasonic, Toshiba, Toyota, etc.
--Steve |
