VxWorks versus Nucleus ATI

[bmcg...@my-deja.com]

Hi All:

We're starting on a new project that will use either
a Tensilica core or a MIPS core.

With respect to the former, only Wind River and ATI
support it with an RTOS.

If you have experience or information that would sell
me on ATI versus Wind River could you post your opinion
please?

thanx

Brian

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

[Chris Wein]

In article <8fes53$go0$1...@nnrp1.deja.com>, <bmcg...@my-deja.com> wrote:
>
>
>Hi All:
>
>We're starting on a new project that will use either
>a Tensilica core or a MIPS core.
>
>With respect to the former, only Wind River and ATI
>support it with an RTOS.

on the kernel eval

We recently selected VxWorks over Nucleus. Here's a quick summary

1) Nucleus is royalty free whereas VxWorks is not.
2) WRS tool seats are more expensive than ATI
3) Nucleus' kernel size is smaller than VxWorks. For the config we
wanted, Nuke was around 70K vs 150K for VxWorks (SPARC v8)
4) Both kernels are fast and efficient.
5) Nucleus has a slightly more rich task communication mechanisms such
as events.
6) ATI licenses source with all distributions. Costs more $$$ for WRS.

Based on these points, you might wonder why we chose VxWorks. However,
if you are evaluating just the kernel then both are fine. If you
are evaluating an RTOS (which includes kernel + I/O + other components)
then VxWorks is the clear winner...

1) VxWorks supports debug over ethernet
2) VxWorks has a fantastic I/O story. FTP client support, filesystems,
per-task stdin/stdout, I/O redirection right out of the box
3) VxWorks has a well thought out set of "hooks" that allow apps to
bind to interesting events like task switch.
4) VxWorks has superior 3rd party support for more esoteric things like
1394 stacks, USB etc.

If you need a small kernel in a heavily embedded system then go with ATI
but if you are scaling up and need more sophisticated I/O then you will
be very pleased with wrs.

[Michael Morrison]

Add to the list below that Nucleus comes with source, wrs does not (Unless
you PAY)
The only thing I didn't like about Nucleus was that you can't give a
semaphore or write a queue from
an ISR. You have to make what they call a "High Level ISR" which you
activate from the ISR.
Kind of a pain.

[Mark Hambleton]

I have recently started using Nucleus and ported from vxWorks.

Having the sources seems to greatly reduce the time for the port as you can
see from the sources why something hasn't worked and don't have to go
through the often very lengthy process of a WRS support request.

We had some issues with the Nucleus ISR mechanism also but as it came with
sources we were able to modify the part that we had problems with.

With reference to the vxWorks IO story, I liked it some much that I replaced
it with my own, probably because I write networking software and the WRS way
was too slow....no idea what the Nucleus OS gives as I use the same for both
OS's, we also wrote our own version of the shell for Nucleus which seems to
give us similar levels of functionality to the WRS way.

I guess the biggest selling point for us had to be the lack of need for
support, sources save time and money for us in the long run......

Mark
--

Michael Morrison <mi...@intelligraphics.com> wrote in message
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