QNX

A microkernel real-time operating system made by a Canadian company of the same name. Originally developed for the IBM PC the system features a userland that mimics UNIX and originally traded on that compatibility and was marketed as QUNIX, but the name was changed after a legal threat from the then UNIX trademark owners AT&T.

Although the company that makes QNX has from time to time tried to market the OS as an end user product it is mainly used as an embedded operating system, it is in particular popular in the automotive market and is making inroads into the medical market, largely at the expense of Intel's Wind River product line. Although originally developed for x86 processors it is today available for most popular embedded architectures including ARM, MIPS and PowerPC.

It is also used as the base for the mobile phone operating system Blackberry OS.

The QNX development system includes:

Watcom C/C++ optimizing compiler
Watcom source-level debugger
Watcom execution profiler
Point-and-click Photon Application Builder
Win32 porting toolkit

History

Gordon Bell (Original developer)
Dan Dodge (Original developer)

Quantum Software Systems

QNX 4.0
QNX 4.1 (Jul 1992)

QNX Software Systems, Ltd

QNX 4.2 (Oct 1993)

QNX Software Systems Limited (Owned by Blackberry since 2010, by Harman International Industries 2004~2010)

Porting issues

As for porting to and from QNX it is best to look at the system like a modern UNIX system and use tools such as GCC when porting to and fro, the system looks like UNIX to most userland programs and the real-time features are nowhere as numerous as they are with OS-9 for instance.

Publications

Frank Kolnick: The QNX Operating System - Basis Computer Systems 1989, ISBN 0-921960-00-X

Links

QNX homepage
Foundry27 - The QNX developers portal