InterNiche Offers NicheTask Embedded OS to Open Source Community

3/1/2004 - InterNiche Technologies, Inc. announced the Open Source contribution of its NicheTaskTM embedded operating system technology to a new independent, collaborative project site, www.FreeRTOS.com.

The contribution of NicheTask gives the OEM community a multitasking embedded operating systems with a proven track record that has been expressly designed for embedded systems with severely limited resources. While many commercial Real-time Operating System (RTOS) products are available, many deeply embedded devices do not require all of the services provided by these RTOS platforms. NicheTask was developed by InterNiche to meet the needs of those applications that do not require a preemptive RTOS. The contribution includes: complete ANSI "C" source code for high portability, make/build files, and a number of ports, including a Windows reference port. NicheTask can be used on any 8, 16, 32 or 64-bit CPU, MPU or SoC.

InterNiche will actively work with the open source community to develop additional ports, provide support and continue development of NicheTask. The source code for NicheTask is royalty free and freely available to commercial and non-commercial users under the NicheTask Open Source License. Users may download the OS code and ports for popular MPU platforms from the FreeRTOS.com developer site, http://www.FreeRTOS.com.

NicheTask is an attractive alternative to developing an in-house kernel. It doesn't tie up in-house resources and is:

  • Ready-to-use, market tested and proven technology
  • Fully documented
  • Supported by GNU and commercial development tools
  • Compatible with InterNiche protocol products offerings
  • Fully ROMable
  • Highly portable, numerous ports already available
  • Enhanced and supported by an active user community

NicheTask is an easy-to-use, universal operating system software platform for different embedded device and appliance platforms.

"Our goal in releasing NicheTask under a less restrictive non-GPL license is to make available a small, lightweight multitasking system to the embedded community without worrying about sharing their proprietary application code," said Brian Ramsey, vice president of marketing at InterNiche. "NicheTask has been distributed with the InterNiche's icheStackTM products for a number of years and has been utilized in hundreds of embedded products. We will continue to distribute and support our own free version of NicheTask to meet the needs of our embedded TCP/IPv4/v6 stack customers."

NicheTask is a multitasking operating system with a round-robin scheduler that contains only task control logic. The API has been designed for easy software reuse -- NicheTask applications can later be mapped to more sophisticated embedded operating systems, such as µC/OS-II. Developers define their own system services and synchronization macros and then by simply #defining these mechanisms to the RTOS calls. A embedded project design can start with NicheTask and upgrade or convert to a different embedded OS at a later time without having to re-port their protocol stack and application code.

Multitasking is a technique to allocate CPU/MPU processing time among several tasks. While executing a task, other tasks have a small amount of state information stored in task stack. By default, all NicheTask tasks execute with the same priority and they are executed in the order they become "ready-to-run". Once a task gains control, it runs until it completes, voluntarily blocks, or terminates. The programmer has control over the length of time that a task is allowed to run so it will not lock the system. Tasks can be dynamically created, with each task having its own stack and control structure.

The FreeRTOS.com community welcomes new member companies and individuals that want to collaborate and contribute to the NicheTask project. It harnesses the pool of talented embedded developers, will lead to further enhancements of NicheTask functionality by leveraging the imagination, development and debugging efforts of the NicheTask user community Full details of the NicheTask open source project, joining the NicheTask newsgroup, source code, ports and documentation are available at www.FreeRTOS.com.

About FreeRTOS.com
FreeRTOS.com is a collaborative open source software project that has been founded by InterNiche around a core embedded developer community interested in creating and supporting a small and reliable embedded operating system. By collaborating and sharing enhancements, embedded developers can concentrate on their areas of expertise and the creation of next-generation embedded devices. For more information please visit www.FreeRTOS.com.

About InterNiche
InterNiche Technologies has been developing and licensing networking management and configuration software for embedded systems since 1989. Hundreds of thousands of products depend on InterNiche software as part of their core functionality. Customers include companies such as 3COM, Ericsson, Intel, Hewlett Packard, Nortel Networks, Raytheon, Samsung, Siemens, and many more. For more information please contact sales@iniche.com or visit InterNiche on the web at www.iniche.com.

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