NEC Electronics has announced support for the open source and royalty free real-time operating system, FreeRTOS for its 16-bit 78K0R and 32-bit V850 microcontrollers.
FreeRTOS is distributed under a modified GPL licence which allows users to deploy in applications without any requirement to share their source code.
By announcing the support for FreeRTOS, NEC is the latest microcontroller supplier to tap into the growing industry in effectively free open-source software for design of embedded systems.
"Free embedded software enables companies to design applications at low cost and ensure they work before contemplating an upgrade to, in this case, OpenRTOS for commercially licensed and supported versions,” said Richard Barry, designer of the FreeRTOS and head of innovation at Wittenstein High Integrity Systems.
FreeRTOS is an independent, open-source operating system designed specifically for embedded microcontroller systems.
“Open source is being adopted on a massive scale by major corporations. FreeRTOS is a truly robust platform and, with 7,000 downloads per month, it has been put through its paces more than most commercial models,” said Barry.
Commercial licensing and support for FreeRTOS is also available through OpenRTOS from Wittenstein.
The FreeRTOS documentation, source code and demonstration examples for 78K0R and V850 are available from the FreeRTOS website.
See more news at Embedded World 2009