Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange
Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [operating-system]

Questions related to software that manages computer hardware resources, and more specifically microcontroller or microprocessor operating Systems

Operating Systems tag refers to non x86 Operating systems, and is rather geared towards microcontroller or microprocessor operating systems that are closely related to electronics on which they run. As example

  • FreeRTOS
  • Embedded Linux
  • TinyOS
  • Contiki
  • uC/OS-II

This is in contrast to "bare metal" systems in which no operating system is present and the programmer is directly responsible to manage all hardware and scheduling.

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When do we need an Operating System in Embedded System Design?

I have written plenty of bare metal code for PIC and x86 processors. Can someone tell me how and when should I need an operating system? Conversely, what application or situation can be dealt with or without an operating system as well?
quantum231
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What stops an assembly program from crashing the operating system?

First of all, I am a beginner, so if this question sounds silly, please point out the incorrect assumptions. From what I understand, the job of an operating system is to manage hardware and the software that runs on the OS. Also, from what I…
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What features distinguishes real-time from other types of os?

I'm experimenting with a small so-called real-time kernel that basically can do nothing but counting to the next prime. It uses interrupt-driven I/O. But why is it a real-time kernel? I read that Linux became a real-time kernel in 2002, is that…
Niklas Rosencrantz
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What are the benefits of a non-preemptive OS? and the price for these benefits?

For a bared metal MCU, Comparing to the homemade code with background loop plus timer interrupt architecture, what are the benefits of a non-preemptive OS? What among these benefits are attractive enough for a project to adopt a non-preemptive OS,…
hailang
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How do I find energy leaks?

I'm in a process of writing software for eZ 430 Chronos watch using TinyOS. I want it to be as low-power as it is possible. Unfortunately, my measurements show power consumption of about 350uA @3.3V on a simple idle program which does nothing, but…
Rafał Rawicki
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Task switching on Cortext-M3 crashes after IRQ

I've used an exokernel model for my ARM OS. When a task wants to read from a UART it calls a library function, which, if there's no data, makes a SVC call to block the task (which causes the kernel to put the task in the wait queue for that IRQ and…
Isvara
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What is the role of ISA (Instruction Set Architecture) in the comp arch abstraction stack.

I have programming background, and I recently started taking computer architecture course. Most of the lectures I see use the some sort of the layering as described in the following diagram explaining what will be covered in the course. The…
Vivek Maran
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Real time operating systems

I have been asked this question: “Do you think the system will need deterministic time or real time responses?” The problem I have is distinguishing the difference between the two. I know that a real time response will respond to an input within a…
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History, reason for and implications of the 2 modes of a modern microprocessor?

The modern microprocessors I've dealt with could have 2 modes: User and superuser (and sometimes this difference was just in the manual and not actually implemented like with the Nios II which states that it has 2 modes but only implements 1).…
Niklas Rosencrantz
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Understanding Raspberry Pi/SBC's at the same level as microcontrollers

I'm a fourth-year EE student and I have just recently started to dive a bit deeper into trying to understand how microcontrollers work at a low level when it comes to running code and performing its operations. I think I have a decent grasp on this…
cEEa
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Can an FPGA/ASIC have an operating system?

I know FPGA/ASIC are for a specific task and they are not microprocessors and an OS is needed mainly if multiple processes (tasks) need to be run concurrently. Just wondering if an FPGA/ASIC can have an operating system. Is there any real time need…
Franc
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How did the arithmetic organ in ENIAC?

I have been reading the book of Goldstine on computers and I was wondering how ENIAC could activate a computation using numbers (the antecedent of the stored program concept). Goldstine wrote that instructions were coded as numbers with part of the…
Gigiux
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RTOS understanding and communication

We are working on a system that will need some predictive emergency stop. As a possible solution the RTOS was mentioned. Not sure if RTOS is a way to go, might just be that we do not have full understanding of the flow of it. So there is a process…
birinorama
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When would it become necessary to use an OS for an ARM MCU

I take it an ARM MCU can be run without an OS - at which point might it become necessary to install one? Can the mbed SDK run without the mbed-os or any other mbed for that matter?
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Function Pointer in C Language

I'm facing a little problem with function pointers in a code for the microcontroller Microchip Pic 18 Series. The code below shows the prototypes of the functions involved in the problem and a call to the function 'insert_task', who should receive…
user49894
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