How is QNX compared to VxWork?

I would like to get some comments and a rough assessment on QNX RTOS, like what makes you like it the most? What makes you like it the least? Does its message passing faster than its competators? Does QNX support networking applications with Ethernet well?

I have special interests in comparing its performance and development tools with those of Wind River VxWorks and Wind River Linux 3.0/4.0. Does it run faster usually than VxWorks and Wind River Linux? Does it takes less memory generally than VxWorks and Wind River Linux? Since QNX IDE is also based on Eclipse, so I guess the transition from Wind River WorkBench to QNX IDE shall be pretty easy and straight-forward, is it true?

Thanks.

Reply to
Like2Learn
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A worthy engineer will alway make rigorous comparisons. I used to do it too. But more and more I'm concluding that current state of the art embedded RTOS's are so well developed and have such a long history that the losers have already been pushed out of the market. What's left is high quality RTOS's that would suit most users.

So my short answer is: They're about the same in performance. What will help you decide the price and pricing model. I think that's where todays' RTOS's are differentiated. It might just come down to personal preference.

That's my take - not necessarily conventional wisdom. YMMV.

Now if you're considering multicore, your selections are much fewer.

JJS

Reply to
John Speth

It really makes sense to me. Actually I have the same feel, the performance gap is almost nowhere, where other factors seem more and more important.

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Reply to
Like2Learn

You need to be very careful about your choice of RTOS. As other posts have stated, the majority of the products on the market today can be regarded as reliable and well supported simply because they have survived.

My reason for suggesting caution is more related to the architecture of the RTOS and the associated impact that the architecture may have...

  1. will your code be portable should you need to change RTOS in the future?

  1. will you be able to employ engineers that know and understand the RTOs you choose?

  2. will you be able to purchase 3rd party middleware for your RTOS?
  3. How easily will you be able to get to grips with your RTOS?
  4. How easy will it be to debug problems with your application using your chosen RTOS?

the most fundamental difference between VxWorks and QNX is as you have described, QNX lends itself to a message passing architecture while VxWorks lends itself to a shared memory architecture.

My personal opinion is that a message passing architecture is easier to get to grips with and as such is potentially easier to understand and debug. However, the majority of software engineers with experience of an embedded RTOS will be very well informed about the Shared Memory architecture.

The best thing for you to do, again in my own humble opinion, is to take a breath and investigate how you would draft a first design of your system using the two architectures. Involve the engineers that you have available and see which architecture you feel most comfortable with.

If you would like more information within this thread or privately then just let me know. I have about 15 years experience in both architectures and could give you pointers for both with no particular bias or commercial.

I do sell and have sold RTOS' for the past 15 years, but I do not represent nor have a commercial interest in either VxWorks or QNX.

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Reply to
KevinP

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