ThreadX tops 5bn deployments - data

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

The ThreadX real time operating system (RTOS) has surpassed 5.4 billion total deployments. Verified by VDC Research with data on each segment, ThreadX is particularly well-represented among the SoC-based subsystems for  Bluetooth, baseband, and WiFi radio. 

Developed by Express Logic 20 years ago, ThreadX is a small, fast, royalty-free RTOS that provides embedded developers with priority-based preemptive scheduling, optimized context switching, and a highly intuitive API. It is deployed in environments where low overhead, high performance, and solid reliability are a must, and in products from sectors that include consumer electronics, medical and scientific instrumentation, industrial control and automation, aerospace, and more.

Product Category			ThreadX Deployments
Mobile Phones			3,318,891,415
Office/Business Automation			874,186,339
Consumer Electronics			776,383,695
Retail Automation			165,543,568
Industrial Automation & Energy/Power			152,657,119
Communications & Networking			76,545,097
Aerospace & Defense			18,961,967
Automotive Transportation			12,549,912
Medical Devices			12,499,099
Other & General Purpose			12,660,942

Source: VDC Research, 2016

“The adoption of ThreadX in the wireless, IoT and various other markets is quite impressive,” said Chris Rommel, Executive Vice President, VDC Research. “By combining our long-standing embedded device, processor, and operating system research with information on dozens of the leading customers of ThreadX, we gained a detailed picture of the use of ThreadX over the past two decades. It is clear that ThreadX’s high performance, small footprint, ease of adoption, and royalty-free licensing make it a favorite among embedded developers and SOC manufacturers from multiple sectors.”

Express Logic designed ThreadX specifically for use in deeply embedded memory- and processing-constrained devices. It is now pre-certified to IEC 61508 SIL 4, IEC 62304 Class C, ISO 26262 ASIL D, UL/IEC 60730, UL/IEC 60335, UL 1998, and EN 50128 SW-SIL 4. ThreadX is also certified for DO-178B designs and is fully MISRA-C:2004 and MISRA C:2014 compliant for safety critical designs.

ThreadX also provides consistent naming conventions, user-friendly APIs, and solid development-tool support. That support, which includes over 100 free downloadable reference demos, full ANSI C source code, and internal expertise at support centers worldwide, helps Express Logic customers and partners alike to make the most effective use of ThreadX for faster, easier development.

“That ThreadX has now surpassed the 5.4 billion mark in total deployments with a double-digit compounded annual growth rate validates our 20-year commitment to easing and enhancing the development experience,” said William E. Lamie, President of Express Logic.

There has been significant support from partners, with companies such as Renesas adding optimisations for its new S124 family of microcontrollers based around ARM's Cortex-M0+ core for IoT applications.  NXP (which includes Freescale), Atmel (soon to be part of Microchip), Texas Instruments and ST Microelectronics all also support the technology

“We selected Express Logic’s ThreadX as the RTOS for Renesas Synergy based on its extensive feature set, rock-solid reliability, and commercial market credibility,” said Peter Carbone, Vice President of the IoT Business Unit at Renesas Electronics in the US. “ThreadX is a core of our Synergy Software Package to help embedded designers accelerate development, inspire innovation, and enable differentiation in the IoT space.”

"With over 5.5 billion deployments, Express Logic has delivered a solid foundation for many developers bringing ARM-based systems to market,” said Richard York, Vice President of Embedded Marketing at ARM. “ThreadX is a market-proven RTOS that gives embedded developers the tools and technology to create compelling embedded solutions and reduce the time-to-market for ARM CPU based products.”

“For many years, Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS has been tightly integrated with our world-leading C/C++ compiler and debugger toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench,” said Mats Ullström, Chief Operating Officer, IAR Systems. “With help from ThreadX, the C-SPY Debugger in IAR Embedded Workbench can display RTOS-specific items such as task lists, queues, and semaphores, which simplifies debugging and expedites time to market. Consequently, we look forward to continued growth in delivering efficient, dependable solutions to embedded-development engineers.”

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Cortex-M0 microcontrollers open up new CAN applications

First Cortex-M0 MCU with on-chip CANopen drivers in ROM

NXP has launched the first two devices, LPC11C12 and LPC11C14, in the LPC11C00 series featuring a Controller Area Network (CAN) 2.0B-compliant controller for industrial and embedded networking applications. CAN has long been considered one of the best choices for robust real-time communication, but price-prohibitive for low-cost embedded applications. With the introduction of the LPC11C00 series, NXP now provides a new low-cost entry point and total CAN solution reducing product development risk, lowering total system cost, and speeding time to market for high-performance embedded designs.

“With the addition of several low cost CAN device options, the LPC1100 family is continuing to expand into even more 8 and 16-bit application areas,” said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, microcontroller product line, NXP Semiconductors. “Offering CAN and CANopen protocol support directly on-chip greatly simplifies the plug-and-play integration process.”

Traditionally used primarily in automotive applications, the CAN bus is now one of the best choices for embedded networking applications which require communication across multiple embedded microcontrollers and CAN device nodes such as sensors and actuators. Some of today’s new market demands are embedded machine control applications such as home appliances, motor controllers and elevator systems, as well as energy and power controllers that increasingly need to communicate with each other. One recent example is a high-end coffee machine using microcontrollers interconnected via CANopen.

Incorporating CANopen drivers in on-chip ROM provides design engineers with easy-to-use API commands to the CANopen protocol, enabling rapid integration of the LPC11C00 series into CAN based networks. These drivers provide defined CAN and CANopen APIs to simplify CAN application development. 

The following functions are included in the API:

• CAN set-up and initialization

• CAN send and receive messages

• CAN status

• CANopen Object Dictionary

• CANopen SDO expedited communication

• CANopen SDO segmented communication primitives

• CANopen SDO fall-back handler

The key is that these drivers are included in the low power ROM, freeing up to 8kB of user code space and offering the dual advantage of reduced operating power, as well as secure and safe bootloads via CAN or other on-chip serial channels. With the security and peace of mind of ROM-based drivers, updating Flash via In System Programming (ISP) over the CAN-bus provides the whole range of functionality from programming blank parts in production through changing system parameters to full in-field re-programmability.

Enabling Higher Code Density and Superior Performance

The LPC11C00 requires 40-50 percent smaller code size than 8/16 bit microcontrollers for most common microcontroller tasks. This is enabled by the powerful Cortex-M0 v6-M instruction set which is built on a fundamental base of 16-bit Thumb instructions unique to 32-bit microcontrollers today.

With over 45 DMIPS of performance, the LPC11C00 series provides powerful message and data handling for CAN device nodes together with a power optimized solution unavailable with today’s 8-/16-bit microcontrollers.

Other key features of the LPC11C12/C14 include:

·         50 MHz Cortex-M0 processor with SWD/debug (4 break-points)

·         32 Vectored Interrupts; 4 priority levels; Dedicated Interrupts on up to 13 GPIOs

·         CAN 2.0 B C_CAN controller with on-chip CANopen drivers

·         UART, 2 SPI & I2C (FM+)

·         Two 16-bit and 2 32-bit timers with PWM/Match/Capture and one 24-bit system timer

·         12MHz Internal RC Oscillator with 1% accuracy over temperature and voltage

·         Power-On-Reset (POR); Multi-level Brown-Out-Detect (BOD); 10-50 MHz Phase-Locked Loop (PLL)

·         8-channel high precision 10-bit ADC with ±1LSB DNL

·         42 fast 5V tolerant GPIO pins, high drive (20 mA) on select pins

·         Single 1.8–3.6V power supply; 6.5kV ESD for rugged applications

Pricing and Availability

Recommended distribution unit pricing in 10,000 piece quantities for the 48-pin QFP package is LPC11C12FBD48 at US $1.68 and LPC11C14FBD48 at $1.98 with 8KB of SRAM and Flash sizes of 16kB and 32kB respectively.The parts will be available at distributors worldwide next month.  

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Internet of Things Takes a Step Forward

RFID collaboration driveseasy linking of devices over the Internet 

International RFID technology leaders NXP Semiconductors, MTI, austriamicrosystems, and RF-iT have come together to demonstrate PlugNPlay solution, a major step towards the Internet of Things
Connecting everyday items to the internet through embedding short-range mobile transceivers enables a new medium of communication between people and objects and between objects themselves. Novel RFID products are presented allowing large scale integration of ubiquitous computing in a way triggering innovative ideas of high value applications for the everyday life.

MTI’s RFID USB Dongle (the RU-888-100) is based on austriamicrosystems Simply Gen 2 AMS3992 high-performance, completely-integrated silicon solution that provides a global, affordable, mobile and enabling EPCglobal C1G2 integrated UHF reader complete with embedded antenna.  RF-iT Solution’s detego EXPRESS provides a powerful software module catalogue with a variety of predefined interfaces to backend ERP or database systems can be downloaded easily. The novel internet link module directly feeds product code information into internet search engines.   NXP’s newly announced UCODE G2iL+ tag silicon provides advanced features for EPCglobal C1G2 tags, including the industry’s first tag level I/O signaling interfaces, enabling low cost passive UHF RFID to be used in applications never before possible.
Smart Interfacing

Plug MTI’s RFID USB Dongle (RU-888-100) with austriamicrosystems inside to a USB port of a PC, download the detego EXPRESS software from RF-iT’s homepage and feed EPC data to any IT-Backend system. Through a series of interfaces defined data (ID, timestamp, location) is provided to seamlessly integrate into your IT backend systems like SAP, Navision, Sage and numerous others.  

Smart Advertising

Download the Internet link option from RF-iT’s home-page and optionally feed EPC data to search engines like Google. Find out valuable information about products and services by just presenting a tagged item to MTI’s RFID USB Dongle reader powered by austriamicrosystems with RF-iT’s software application seamlessly connecting EPC data to the world wide web.

Smart Theft Protection

The recently announced NXP Semiconductors UCODE G2iL+ presents many exciting new features never before available from EPCglobal C1G2 compliant UHF tag silicon. One application that the partners have leveraged from the UCODE G2iL+ and demonstrate is the activation and deactivation of electronic devices over the RFID link. By integrating NXP’s tiny G2iL+ silicon into a tag, and then embedding this within an object or item, or even a printed circuit board (PCB) of a device such as a mobile phone, MP3 player or printer, the product can be stored on the sales floor in a deactivated state minimizing its value to potential shoplifters. Activation and downloading of relevant software or firmware of the device can be done at home after proper registration on the vendor’s homepage, or alternatively at the POS, whichever is most convenient.

NXP's UCODE G2iL series offer leading edge read range enabling simple antenna design solutions that increase the cost effectiveness of RFID solutions.  An extensive set of features, including the Digital Switch, Data Transfer, Tag Tamper Alarm, battery assist mode and advanced privacy features make RFID more reliable, more flexible and easier to work with. 

MTI was founded in 1983 as the first RF and Microwave design and manufacturing company in Taiwan.

Related RFID articles

• Intermec Enhances RFID Data Capture and Asset Management with New Solutions (eon.businesswire.com)
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• Intelleflex Announces New Standards Based Battery Assisted Passive (BAP) RFID Platform (eon.businesswire.com)

NXP develops new class of digital controller with ARM Corex-M4

Shows first working silicon at 150MHz

NXP Semiconductors has developed a new class of digital signal controller based on the ARM Cortex-M4 processor core using an ultra low-leakage 90-nm process technology. This enables performance in excess of 150MHz, as well as very low active power consumption. In addition, the MCUs will offer extremely low power down currents using design techniques proprietary to NXP. With the high-efficiency signal processing functionality of the Cortex-M4, the NXP microcontrollers are designed for a broad range of applications, including sophisticated motor control, digital power control and embedded audio.  

NXP is demonstrating a 7-channel audio graphic equalizer application processing 32-bit precision audio data that requires only 12 MHz of CPU bandwidth using the Cortex-M4 DSP extensions, and 60 MIPs without.

Traditional microcontrollers are designed to perform control-oriented applications but are not well suited for sophisticated digital signal processing algorithms. Adding a separate DSP can make the over all system extremely complex and costly. However, with the optimized high-performance DSP extensions on the Cortex-M4, this new class of DSC is designed to solve both control and signal processing easily and seamlessly.

The ARM Cortex-M4 processor has an extensive set of single cycle multiply-accumulate (MAC) instructions; optimized single instruction multiple data (SIMD) instructions; saturated arithmetic instructions; as well as a single precision Floating Point Unit (FPU). Coupled with speeds exceeding 150MHz, NXP’s Cortex-M4-based MCUs are ideal for processing analogue data and complex processing algorithms.

“Our newest microcontrollers based on the ARM Cortex-M4 processor will be an important part of NXP’s High Performance Mixed Signal portfolio, providing embedded system designers with an effective way to process data from complex analog peripherals,” said Geoff Lees, vice president and general manager, microcontroller product line, NXP Semiconductors. “The DSP extensions of the Cortex-M4 offer significant advantages, for example, offering 5 to 10 times improvement in complex DSP algorithms.”

“NXP and ARM have brought together technologies that will change the landscape of DSC market significantly,” said Paul Beckmann, CEO of NXP partner DSP Concept. “We are already porting all of our algorithms to support the NXP DSC platform.” NXP is engaging with key customers now and is on track to deliver functional products to the broader market at the beginning of 2011.

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