Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet) [LWN.net]

Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)

Posted May 13, 2005 9:55 UTC (Fri) by simlo (subscriber, #10866)
In reply to: Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet) by clugstj
Parent article: Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)

It depends on whichs parts of VxWorks you use. If you use the core, i.e. the scheduler, I would have no problems with it. It just _works_. If you start to use all their add-ons: They are crap. The functionality is 95% there so you think you can use it but once you have deployed your stuff the last 5% starts to hit you and give a lot of trouble.

VxWorks is good for a small, well defined project where you can make an combined OS-application image and burn it into a flash or a prom and skip it with the device. But once you start to do more dynamic stuff like loading an application in the middle of it or just running a lot of different services it sucks compared to Linux. Also the hardware support for common devices lacks in vxWorks compared to Linux.

BUT Linux isn't deterministic real-time although Ingo is working hard on getting it detterministic. But Linux will not obtain the low interrupt and task latencies of vxWorks. Linux will probably get to 50-100 us whereas vxWorks is down to 1-10 us on a typical embedded target.

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Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)

Posted May 28, 2005 21:48 UTC (Sat) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link]

Also the hardware support for common devices lacks in vxWorks compared to Linux.

That's for darned sure. Their USB stack blows, for example--things that Just Work on Linux (which is lots and lots of things) require weeks or months of support calls and workarounds with VxWorks.

But Linux will not obtain the low interrupt and task latencies of vxWorks. Linux will probably get to 50-100 us whereas vxWorks is down to 1-10 us on a typical embedded target.

It won't come close to hitting VxWorks' footprint, either. But that's OK--they're different OSes with different markets (i.e., target hardware). Wind River's problem is that the market for the minimalist hardware on which VxWorks shines is rapidly vanishing.

Greg