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View Full Version : Operating system kernels for microcontrollers!??!



Armando Herjim
- 3rd October 2006, 01:46
Hey everybody. Last week I met a guy who told me that there are kernels... little kernels from operating systems like linux that you can load into a microcontroller (depending on wich micro we´re talking about).... Anyways, does anybody knows something about this?? Are these little kernels available for pics??

Regards.

DynamoBen
- 3rd October 2006, 01:52
The only one I could find was uClinux

http://www.uclinux.org/

ErnieM
- 3rd October 2006, 21:47
No, a PIC is not powerful enough to use or require a kernal.

You can thing of a kernal as "DOS" (it isn't, but is analogous), it contains things like heap allocators, file handling routines for mass storage, very 'hi level' stuff compared to a PIC that just bangs a few bits around the ports.

Some of the ‘ds’ series micros have the capability to need some of this. Microchip makes these libraries as free or cheap as possible, but you’re into C compiler land there.