Design and development of a reconfigurable virtual platform for real time kernel

Abstract

The time of delivering the embedded system solution to market is very important, because of the highly competitive market and demand of the consumer needs. In Real Time Operating System (RTOS) based embedded systems, the overall correctness of the embedded system depends on logically correct output within the specified time. Developing, testing and debugging of an RTOS based embedded system takes lots of time. The virtual platform provides the great advantage in developing, testing and debugging the RTOS based embedded system. This work describes the design and development of a reconfigurable virtual platform for real-time kernel. Eclipse IDE platform, NXP LPC-2129 target, OpenOCD have been chosen to develop this reconfigurable virtual platform for real-time kernels. For the selected target, GNU Toolchain has been configured as a plug-in in Eclipse IDE for both Windows and Linux to get own virtual platform. The μC/OS-II Board Support Package and the virtual timer for gdb debugger to support selected target has been developed and added in this virtual platform. This virtual platform facilitates the reconfiguration of the various RTOS such as μC/OS-II, DrRTOS and AVX. From the implementation of this design framework on real system, it can be concluded that the virtual platform increases the efficiency of the RTOS based applications. It gives the single solution for the developers to develop, execute, test, debug and verify the applications for various RTOS in a shorter span of time and with substantial reduction of developmental cost.