5 ms·

The QNX Neutrino Microkernel (2007)

61 points by m0th87 8y ago

fouc 8y ago
My biggest dream is for some version of QNX along with the Photon GUI to be fully open sourced. Even if it was QNX 4. It would be a game changer.
- senectus1 8y ago
  It seems to me to be ideal for automation, yet most seem to be using Linux. This is probably due to the Open Source status I suspect.
  - fouc 8y ago
    Photon GUI alone to replace X windows would be amazing.
    - Animats 8y ago
      I used it as my main desktop system for three years while working on a self-driving vehicle, in 2003-2005. There were versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office, so you had all the essentials. It's OK, but would feel dated to most users. The really great feature is that there is no lag. The consistency of QNX is impressive. This is a real-time system, not a warmed-over time sharing system. No swapping or paging. Proper CPU scheduling. So little "why did it do that?"
      - sgt 8y ago
        Tesla is using Linux and Qt UI which seems to work pretty well.
      - fouc 8y ago
        It was amazing to be able to restart the GUI without even impacting the apps that were running.
      - zozbot123 8y ago
        >... No swapping or paging. ... That's more of a function of your hardware resources and workload than the OS architecture you're running. E.g. a lightweight Linux desktop installed on present-day hardware will literally run with zero swap use - in fact, it will cache most disk access. (Unless you open something that hogs RAM, of course.) That may not be literally a soft-RT system, but from the user's POV it's just as snappy as one.
      - spamizbad 8y ago
        You must have been throwing a lot of CPU power at it, or perhaps I've just been extremely unlucky: I've used multiple QNX based user interfaces and the one thing they all had in common was their lagginess and unresponsiveness.
        fouc 8y ago
        What version did you try? When I tried QNX 4.24 on my desktop computer, I think it might've been on a 125 mhz pentium? Or a 486. The Photon GUI was snappy.
        Animats 8y ago
        6.71, on a Pentium III.
  - derefr 8y ago
    If you’re talking about automation like in factories or appliances or robots, “most” are actually using either VxWorks, Integrity, or ThreadX. (IoT devices certainly use Linux, but mostly for the same reason they do everything else: to decrease their BOM while still seeming “feature-rich.”)
  - glenrivard 8y ago
    Also where the momentum is at is using Linux. More are moving from proprietary solutions to using Linux. Suspect that will continue to happen.
  - StrictDabbler 8y ago
    Tridium/Niagara AX is the leading supplier-agnostic integration software for building automation. It's huge and it's QNX. Air-handlers, fluid-coolers, chillers, etc., are now frequently powered by a JACE (an embedded controller running the Niagara platform on the QNX Neutrino microkernel). JACEs are used to handle integrating BACnet equipment and coordination across sites. It's quietly becoming the standard way to do things if you're not just going to hand Honeywell or Trane a million dollars and hope things turn out ok.
- dilyevsky 8y ago
  It was at one point. unfortunately RIM got their dirty hands on it...
  - dman 8y ago
    If someone has the source code from back when it was publicly available I would really appreciate it being posted on Github. (Assuming that the license allows it). I have looked for a copy many times over the years but am always amazed that somehow no copy appears to have survived.
    - Animats 8y ago
      I was so mad that I hadn't downloaded the sources before it was too late. So was everybody developing for QNX. All open source development for QNX stopped on that date. On that date, RIM stock was worth $69.97 per share. Today, $7.60.
      - wolfgke 8y ago
        > I was so mad that I hadn't downloaded the sources before it was too late. So was everybody developing for QNX. All open source development for QNX stopped on that date. > On that date, RIM stock was worth $69.97 per share. Today, $7.60. Correlation does not imply causation.
        mhb 8y ago
        It is suggestive of competence though.
    - tyingq 8y ago
      It wasn't really open source anyway. "Access to QNX source code is free, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics® development seats" http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html
    - 8y ago
- rwmj 8y ago
  Did no one try to make an open source QNX clone? Because the kernel at least is rather minimal I would have thought this was very achievable, probably easier than the initial version of Linux for example.
  - tfolbrecht 8y ago
    Why when there's FreeRTOS and a Realtime patchset for the Linux Kernel? Not sure what else the QNX ecology covers.
    - aseipp 8y ago
      FreeRTOS isn't a desktop class operating system (which QNX was fine at), it's a kernel for microcontroller class devices. QNX was a real desktop, not just a kernel. RT-Linux is an external patchset that still only gives you Linux, with some extra guarantees, but does not fundamentally change any other design decisions. QNX is real time from the ground up (for example, even disk I/O was bound by these policies, which I don't think RT Linux guarantees). QNX had a message passing microkernel architecture, that transparently extended to multi-node computing -- you could reboot/restart device drivers, message passing was transparent across single/multi-node programs. File access was transparently multi node, too. This means you could do things like run QNX as your desktop and cross compile your application on that desktop (for ARM, MIPS, whatever) and "run" it and it would magically run on some remote embedded control system in your office, provided they were networked together. All of this would be bound by real-time policies (so your browser audio would not, for example, stutter because you were compiling something and I/O scheduling anomalies caused a latency spike to hit the audio buffer.) This was true all the way up to the window manager -- you could network two completely separate systems and even mirror/split windows between them, AFAIK. It was also a POSIX compliant system. In a sense it seems like a blend of what was later Plan 9 and something like Minix. Everyone here posts about K8S all the time, but QNX was the original microservice-based distributed operating system, IMO. :) Honestly, I really wish a capability-based QNX successor would hit the scene. seL4 would be an excellent basis for this. Fuschia seems like the best contender right now (but doesn't use seL4), but it's unclear where it will go and I'm wary of such a project being tied to Google in the long run (for fear of similar problems that have plagued Android as a platform.)
rurban 8y ago
Essentially the same trick as in L4. Minimal messaging with MMU protection, all syscalls (messages) are blocking, no mailbox per receiver, unlike Mach/Hurd. Their biggest problem. QNX has much better POSIX support than L4 though. But L4 is open source.

61 points by m0th87 8y ago

fouc 8y ago

My biggest dream is for some version of QNX along with the Photon GUI to be fully open sourced. Even if it was QNX 4. It would be a game changer.

senectus1 8y ago
It seems to me to be ideal for automation, yet most seem to be using Linux. This is probably due to the Open Source status I suspect.
- fouc 8y ago
  Photon GUI alone to replace X windows would be amazing.
  - Animats 8y ago
    I used it as my main desktop system for three years while working on a self-driving vehicle, in 2003-2005. There were versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, and Open Office, so you had all the essentials. It's OK, but would feel dated to most users. The really great feature is that there is no lag. The consistency of QNX is impressive. This is a real-time system, not a warmed-over time sharing system. No swapping or paging. Proper CPU scheduling. So little "why did it do that?"
    - sgt 8y ago
      Tesla is using Linux and Qt UI which seems to work pretty well.
    - fouc 8y ago
      It was amazing to be able to restart the GUI without even impacting the apps that were running.
    - zozbot123 8y ago
      >... No swapping or paging. ... That's more of a function of your hardware resources and workload than the OS architecture you're running. E.g. a lightweight Linux desktop installed on present-day hardware will literally run with zero swap use - in fact, it will cache most disk access. (Unless you open something that hogs RAM, of course.) That may not be literally a soft-RT system, but from the user's POV it's just as snappy as one.
    - spamizbad 8y ago
      You must have been throwing a lot of CPU power at it, or perhaps I've just been extremely unlucky: I've used multiple QNX based user interfaces and the one thing they all had in common was their lagginess and unresponsiveness.
      - fouc 8y ago
        What version did you try? When I tried QNX 4.24 on my desktop computer, I think it might've been on a 125 mhz pentium? Or a 486. The Photon GUI was snappy.
        Animats 8y ago
        6.71, on a Pentium III.
- derefr 8y ago
  If you’re talking about automation like in factories or appliances or robots, “most” are actually using either VxWorks, Integrity, or ThreadX. (IoT devices certainly use Linux, but mostly for the same reason they do everything else: to decrease their BOM while still seeming “feature-rich.”)
- glenrivard 8y ago
  Also where the momentum is at is using Linux. More are moving from proprietary solutions to using Linux. Suspect that will continue to happen.
- StrictDabbler 8y ago
  Tridium/Niagara AX is the leading supplier-agnostic integration software for building automation. It's huge and it's QNX. Air-handlers, fluid-coolers, chillers, etc., are now frequently powered by a JACE (an embedded controller running the Niagara platform on the QNX Neutrino microkernel). JACEs are used to handle integrating BACnet equipment and coordination across sites. It's quietly becoming the standard way to do things if you're not just going to hand Honeywell or Trane a million dollars and hope things turn out ok.
dilyevsky 8y ago
It was at one point. unfortunately RIM got their dirty hands on it...
- dman 8y ago
  If someone has the source code from back when it was publicly available I would really appreciate it being posted on Github. (Assuming that the license allows it). I have looked for a copy many times over the years but am always amazed that somehow no copy appears to have survived.
  - Animats 8y ago
    I was so mad that I hadn't downloaded the sources before it was too late. So was everybody developing for QNX. All open source development for QNX stopped on that date. On that date, RIM stock was worth $69.97 per share. Today, $7.60.
    - wolfgke 8y ago
      > I was so mad that I hadn't downloaded the sources before it was too late. So was everybody developing for QNX. All open source development for QNX stopped on that date. > On that date, RIM stock was worth $69.97 per share. Today, $7.60. Correlation does not imply causation.
      - mhb 8y ago
        It is suggestive of competence though.
  - tyingq 8y ago
    It wasn't really open source anyway. "Access to QNX source code is free, but commercial deployments of QNX Neutrino runtime components still require royalties, and commercial developers will continue to pay for QNX Momentics® development seats" http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html http://www.qnx.com/news/pr_2471_1.html
  - 8y ago
rwmj 8y ago
Did no one try to make an open source QNX clone? Because the kernel at least is rather minimal I would have thought this was very achievable, probably easier than the initial version of Linux for example.
- tfolbrecht 8y ago
  Why when there's FreeRTOS and a Realtime patchset for the Linux Kernel? Not sure what else the QNX ecology covers.
  - aseipp 8y ago
    FreeRTOS isn't a desktop class operating system (which QNX was fine at), it's a kernel for microcontroller class devices. QNX was a real desktop, not just a kernel. RT-Linux is an external patchset that still only gives you Linux, with some extra guarantees, but does not fundamentally change any other design decisions. QNX is real time from the ground up (for example, even disk I/O was bound by these policies, which I don't think RT Linux guarantees). QNX had a message passing microkernel architecture, that transparently extended to multi-node computing -- you could reboot/restart device drivers, message passing was transparent across single/multi-node programs. File access was transparently multi node, too. This means you could do things like run QNX as your desktop and cross compile your application on that desktop (for ARM, MIPS, whatever) and "run" it and it would magically run on some remote embedded control system in your office, provided they were networked together. All of this would be bound by real-time policies (so your browser audio would not, for example, stutter because you were compiling something and I/O scheduling anomalies caused a latency spike to hit the audio buffer.) This was true all the way up to the window manager -- you could network two completely separate systems and even mirror/split windows between them, AFAIK. It was also a POSIX compliant system. In a sense it seems like a blend of what was later Plan 9 and something like Minix. Everyone here posts about K8S all the time, but QNX was the original microservice-based distributed operating system, IMO. :) Honestly, I really wish a capability-based QNX successor would hit the scene. seL4 would be an excellent basis for this. Fuschia seems like the best contender right now (but doesn't use seL4), but it's unclear where it will go and I'm wary of such a project being tied to Google in the long run (for fear of similar problems that have plagued Android as a platform.)

rurban 8y ago

Essentially the same trick as in L4. Minimal messaging with MMU protection, all syscalls (messages) are blocking, no mailbox per receiver, unlike Mach/Hurd. Their biggest problem. QNX has much better POSIX support than L4 though. But L4 is open source.