Web site: www.ifr.mavt.ethz.ch/research/xoberon/
Origin: Switzerland
Category: Desktop
Desktop environment: TUI
Architecture: PowerPC
Based on: Oberon
Wikipedia:
Media: Install
The last version | Released: 1998 (?)
XOberon/PowerPC – a hard real-time operating system (HRTOS), deployed for high-end mechatronic products control. It has been developed at the Institute of Robotics, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich. XOberon is loosely based on the Oberon System, and it is written in the Oberon-2 programming language. XOberon in its most recent incarnation takes advantage of the computational power of the PowerPC processor architecture.
The goal of XOberon is about providing a framework for non-computer-scientists, looking for a rapid application development (RAD) tool for programming embedded applications.
The system is particularly suited for complex modeling of real-time applications, given its modularity, clean interface definitions and the presence of a dynamic loader, which checks for interface compatibility, too. The very fast compiler, along with the dynamic loader allow short edit-compile-run cycles.
The operating systems, presents a clear, object oriented and polymorphic interface to the programmer. The framework provides high-level abstractions for most of the real-time programming problems.
Particular care has been applied for providing a reliable and safe run-time environment. XOberon solves most of the usual real-time issues by implementing a deadline-driven scheduler with admission testing. Run-time memory accesses are guarded by the address translation done by hardware and software. The testing for logical correctness is simplified by the strong-typed Oberon-2 compiler.
The run-time performance of the system and the applications has also been carefully tuned. The system schedules tasks with a 100 microseconds time-slice, with a kernel overhead of less than one percent on a PowerPC 604, clocked at 100 MHz.
Oberon is both the name of a programming language and operating system developed at ETH Zurich.
SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
– An Intel-based Personal Computer running Microsoft Windows 95, Windows NT, or Microsoft Windows 3.1 with Win32s
– A 386, 486, Pentium or Pentium Pro processor.
– 8 MB of memory (absolute minimum).
– 10 MB of hard disk space.
– Preferably a screen with resolution of 1024 by 768 pixels with 256 colors (although smaller size screens will work too).
– Preferably a three button mouse (and a mouse driver that supports all three mouse buttons).
