According to Green Hills (Santa Barbara, Calif.), µ-velOSity is ideal resource-constrained embedded devices. The operating system has a ROM footprint as small as 1,600 bytes, RAM footprint as small as 1,000 bytes and service call times as low as 30 cycles, Green Hills said.

µ-velOSity's application programming interface (API) and world-class tools integration with the Multi integrated development environment (IDE) enables developers to create better performing systems at a lower cost that get to market faster than development efforts utilizing other RTOS offerings on the market today, the company said.

"Senior management teams have been asking us for not only the most technologically advanced and productive solution, but one that covers product families, product generations, and product verticals," said David Kleidermacher, Green Hills vice president of engineering, in a statement. "µ-velOSity is an important part of our vision for a compatible technology that spans from the most deeply embedded, cost-sensitive devices to high-end, reliability-critical systems.”

According to Green Hills, the µ-velOSity includes complete source code, making it easy for developers to understand and debug any aspect of the system. With Multi's kernel-aware debugging, project creation wizard, and TimeMachine integration, device software is easy to develop, analyze, debug, test and optimize, Green Hills said.

µ-velOSity provides fast services and real-time, deterministic execution, Green Hills said. Context switching, service calls and interrupt handling are finely tuned for maximum throughput and minimum latency, even under heavy loads, the company said. µ-velOSity also boots in less than 1,500 processor cycles, an advantage for consumer electronics and other devices that have an “instant-on” requirement, the company said.

µ-velOSity is available today for ARM technology, PowerPC host processors and ColdFire embedded controllers, Green Hills said, with additional microprocessor support expected in the near future. Pricing information was not disclosed.