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Latest Release
What's New
- Technical paper on Platform Security
is avialable.
(2009年10月08日)
- Support pathname-based access control.
(2009年10月01日)
- Support ARM Integrator.
(2008年10月18日)
- Application Programming Guide released.
(2008年09月15日)
- Power Management Document released.
(2008年09月10日)
- Prex Datasheet (pdf)
is available now.
(2008年08月31日)
- Add CmdBox User's Guide.
(2008年08月27日)
- Support FAT file system.
(2008年08月11日)
- Prex coding standard updated.
(2008年06月20日)
- Added POSIX emulation including fork(), exec(), pid, signal, tty,
libc, init, UNIX utilities.
(2007年12月25日)
- Initial release of the file system server.
(2007年06月20日)
- Support DPC service.
(2007年04月13日)
- Various bug corrections and improvement of kernel API.
(2007年01月24日)
Prex Embedded Real-Time Operating System
What is Prex?
Prex is an open source, royalty-free, real-time operating system
for embedded systems.
It is designed and implemented for resource-constrained systems
that require predictable timing behavior.
The highly portable code of Prex is written in 100% ANSI C based on traditional microkernel architecture.
Prex Design
The Prex microkernel provides only fundamental features for task, thread,
memory, IPC, exception, and synchronization.
The other basic OS functions - process, file system, application
loading, and networking, are provided by the user mode servers.
In addition, Prex provides a POSIX emulation layer
in order to utilize existing *NIX applications.
This design allows the system
to perform both of the native real-time task and the generic POSIX process
simultaneously without degrading real-time performance.
It also helps platform designers to construct OS
by choosing suitable system servers for their target requisition.
Project Goals
The project targets the following goals:
- To provide a small, portable, real-time, secure, and robust operating system.
- To provide simple and clean source codes for education
and an experimental test-bed.
- To conform to open standards as much as possible.
- To enjoy our life with kernel hacking. ;-)
Royalty Free
License
Prex is royalty-free software released under Revised BSD License.
Features
Prex has the following features:
- Task & Thread Control: preemptive priority scheduling with
256 priority levels
- Memory Management: memory protection, virtual address mapping,
shared memory, MMU or MMU-less configuration
- IPC: object name space, synchronous message passing between threads
- Exception: fault trapping, framework for POSIX signal emulation
- Synchronization: semaphores, condition variables, and mutexes
with priority inheritance
- Timers: sleep timers, one-shot or periodic timers
- Interrupt: nested interrupt service
routines, and prioritized interrupt service threads
- Device I/O: minimum synchronous I/O interface, DPC (Deferred Procedure Call)
- Security: task capability, pathname-based access control,
I/O access permission.
- Real-time: low interrupt latency, high resolution timers
and scheduling priority control
- Power Management: power policy, idle thread, DVS (Dynamic Voltage Scaling)
- Debugging Facility: event logging, kernel dump, GDB remote debug
- File Systems: multi-threaded, VFS framework, buffer cache, ramfs, fatfs, arfs, etc.
- POSIX Emulation: pid, fork, exec, file I/O, signal, pipe, tty, pthread, etc.
- Libc: C library fully optimized to generate a small executable file
- CmdBox: a small binary that includes tiny versions of many UNIX utilities.
- Networking: (plan) TCP/IP stack, BSD socket interface
Hardware Requirements
H/W image
Prex minimum hardware requirements are as follows:
- Processor: 32-bit Processor (x86, ARM, PowerPC)
- Memory: 256KB of RAM (Kernel < 25k bytes)
- Timer: programmable interval timer
Note: RAM requirements may vary depending on the number of
system servers being supported.
