Virtualizing QNX 6.0

Is this ordinary Win XP or Win XP Embedded ? If XP, I would be quite concerned with the remaining life cycle for XP, the Win XXX Embedded versions have had at least in the past a longer life cycle (e.g. no W2k Embedded, so NT4 Embedded lived for quite a long time).

I do not know about the processing power requirement for your QNX system, but usually the x86 embedded boards have a much longer life cycle then ordinary desk top boxes. However, the RoHS requirements may prematurely terminate the production of some older non-RoHS boards due to lack of non-RoHS components.

For the user interface box, you are still going to have to replace the box due to the increasing resource requirements of future Windows operating systems.

At least for the QNX box, you should be able to extend the life cycle and thus reduce the requalification costs, with suitable choice of hardware, especially if you do not need the absolute top performance for the application.

When there are some severe realtime requirements for a system running a general purpose OS (Such as Windows or Linux), the usual practice is to use a real time extension, which in practice is a RT-kernel running the RT application and then running the general purpose (Windows/Linux) OS as the null/idle task in the RT-kernel, using the unused CPU would have otherwise been used by the idle loop.

Do you absolutely need the newest hardware for performance issues or due to end of production for the older card ?

Paul

Reply to
Paul Keinanen
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Sure it is, but my guess is that the computer box cost is insignificant compared to the total life cycle costs of the OP's system.

My experience with passive backplanes is from the days of ordinary PCI backplanes, the PCI Express may have complicated things.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Keinanen

That requirement sounds that you should use more than two computers (or at least several XP systems in VMware etc.). Keep the QNX system on a separate hardware and the VM system on a different hardware.

It would be natural to keep the general XP specific part on one VM and the country and hospital specific part on the other XP VM. It is quite likely that the hospital side may be updated at some time different for the update time of the rest of the imaging system.

By the way, for how long are you required to provide spare parts and support for your system, one year, three years or ten years or more ? This will also dictate what kind of hardware to use and how to partition the functionality into different (real or virtual) boxes.

Paul

Reply to
Paul Keinanen

I have to ask: Why even have Windows-anything in the picture? There are lots of one-box Linux cum realtime approaches available, and a two-box solution (QNX in one, vanilla Linux in the other, enet between) would be dead simple, and either approach would be far more stable than Windows, both immediately, and also in avoidance of the Windows Upgrade Treadmill.

If (as others have suggested) you use industrial-grade hardware, the treadmill will churn far slower than with consumer PCs as well.

Joe Gwinn

Reply to
Joseph Gwinn

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