[okl4-developer] TinyOS on top of okl4

[Sergio Ruocco]

At the end of the day, most intelligent sensors (those deployed in WSNs,
at least) are basically single-purpose, dedicated devices, intended to
run just one tightly-coded application on bare metal. There is little
need for an OS if only 1 "simple" application runs. Welcome to the wild
no-OS land, where some of my students ventured to never come back ;-)

Moreover, the sensor's CPU, Flash and RAM can be too small to
accommodate, besides an application, a real OS (= providing at least
threads, scheduling, IPC, and protection), even if it is a 'small'
microkernel like L4 or L4-nano.

For example, CPUs of the MSP-430 family I am using now in an embedded
sys. class have as little as 1 KB of Flash memory and 256 BYTES of RAM:

http://focus.ti.com/paramsearch/docs/parametricsearch.tsp?familyId=342&sectionId=95&tabId=1200&family=mcu

Even if there are some MSP-430s with a large-enough memory, they still
are 16 bit CPUs (without protection), and I don't know if OKL4/-nano
will build and run on a 16 bit CPU (but ask OK-Labs guys for definitive
answers on OKL4's absolute minimum hardware requirements).

However, L4 surely lives and thrives in the immediately higher step of
the embedded ladder: general-purpose embedded systems with 32/64-bit
CPUs and "some" KBs of RAM.

These systems are intended to run multiple applications, and thus need a
real OS to share resources and devices in a secure and efficient way. A
TinyOS port to OKL4 would provide a portability layer for WSN
applications on this class of devices.

Cheers,

	Sergio


Guanghui, Cheng wrote:
> On Monday 04 May 2009 04:48:53 pm Dennis Gessner wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> in one of my projects the discussion came upon, if it is possible to run
>> TinyOS on top of okl4.
> 	What is the benefit of TinyOS on top of OKL4? As i know the TinyOS is used 
> for dust device or OKL4 is for embedded device.  I think it is possible to 
> port TinyOS to OKL4 but maybe the problem is the OKL4 can't be used for dust 
> devices such as sensors.
> 													Cheng
> 
> 
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