Friday, April 18, 2008

QNX: what lies behind the three letters?

Name QNX often read in the news and on Internet sites dedicated software. But what lies behind the name nedlinnym knows is not as much a great number of people. That is the QNX, and is designed to broadly describe the article.

As it is written on the official site of the Russian-speaking, QNX - a real-time operating system, following the principles clearly mikroyadernoy architecture. " What does this mean? Let me quote another one, this time from the POSIX standard description: "The real time operating systems - is the ability of the operating system to provide the desired level of service for a certain period of time." That is, the system must respond to the events (for example, user actions) with a delay not exceeding in any case, some established standard sizes.

What does it mean that the words that QNX - mikroyadernaya operating system? This means that the kernel - the main part of the operating system that provides access to applications coordinated computer resources - is not a monolithic program, a combination of several existing separate parallel processes. If some kernel functions are not needed, they can remove fear, without violating the integrity of the kernel, and nothing changing in the rest of its components.

Where is the operating system can be applied to similar properties? Indeed, even applications very much. It is used, for example, in managing nuclear reactors. One of the most famous systems of this class, Open Architecture Distributed Control System, developed by the Canadian company Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Based on QNX. Used QNX and in the post-Soviet space: for example, on the basis of a system of automated control and management razvodkoy Troitsky bridge over the Neva in St. Petersburg, realized JSC NPP Promtransavtomatika. " QNX and used in the management of traffic, in research - more specifically, the apparatus by means of which these studies are conducted. The company uses Cisco QNX software to manage their switchboard.

QNX is known not only for its modularity and reliability, and portability: it can work on the processor architectures such as MIPS, PowerPC, SH-4, ARM, StrongArm, Intel XScale and x86. Since the operating system conforms to the POSIX standard (this is standard operating systems software interfaces designed to ensure software portability at the source level), then it is relatively easy to transfer the source code from UNIX platforms. No, but, as the POSIX system, QNX differs from most modern UNIX 's that for the system to pay, and not enough.

While in the CIS QNX is not so popular, as in the West - still affect the consequences of repression for illegal use of 90 - s - but the ice has set off. State Technical Commission of the President of the Russian Federation in 2004 issued a certificate certifying that the real-time operating system QNX 4.25 tested on 2-level control of unclaimed lack of opportunities. The certificate allows the use of the product in the design protection systems for automated systems to class B 1 inclusive, as required by the governing documents Gostehkomissii Russia. Unfortunately, the certification QNX in Belarus were unable to learn anything - apparently, the system we have not been certified.

I think for QNX - a great future. Because of information in all spheres of human activity leads to the emergence of a large number of embedded systems, where QNX is used very widely.


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