The 16th Annual Workshop on Operating Systems Platforms for Embedded Real-Time Applications will be held at ECRTS 2020 in Modena, Italy from July 7-10, 2020. The OSPERT workshop itself takes place on July 7.

OSPERT is a satellite workshop of the 32nd Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2019), the premier European venue for presenting research into the broad area of real-time and embedded systems. OSPERT is open to all topics related to providing a reliable operating environment for real-time and embedded applications.

The Linux Foundation’s Kate Stewart will give a keynote on July 7 about the RTOS landscape and how Zephyr is the leading RTOS for IoT and embedded devices. 

Stay tuned here for more details. For more information about the conference, please visit the ECRTS website.

Embedded World 2020 takes place on February 25-27, 2020 in Nuremberg, Germany. Now in its 18th year, the conference covers all aspects of the development and application of embedded systems, from fundamental technologies to development processes and special fields of application. With nearly 2,000 participants and 31,000 visitors the conference has over the years become an international meeting place for the professional embedded developer community.

Zephyr will be on display on the show floor again this year. Several Zephyr project members will be on-site in booth Hall 4-170. More details coming soon….

In addition to the booth, several of the Zephyr Project leaders will be giving presentations.

On Wednesday, February 26:

At 11:30 – 12 pm, Prof. Robert Oshana with NXP Semiconductors, will give a presentation titled, “Practical Software Testing Techniques and Guidelines for Embedded Systems.” Embedded technology has revolutionized sectors of the industry in ways that were previously never thought possible. For this reason, product testing is becoming increasingly important. Ensuring that our embedded technology functions properly is a priority for most companies, regardless of where that technology happens to be located. In this presentation we will explore white box and black box techniques for testing embedded systems, talk about system and performance testing, and summarize some of the unique testing requirements and approaches for real-time embedded systems. Topics include static and dynamic analysis techniques, exploratory testing, equivalence partitioning and boundary value analysis, and hueristics based testing methods.

At 12:30-1 pm, Kate Stewart with the Linux Foundation will give a presentation titled, “Safety Certification and Open Source – Can They Work Together?” 

The last 20 years have seen a tremendous surge of new technologies and capabilities emerge from open source software. These open source building blocks have become increasingly attractive as the base for innovative new products. Safety critical applications are now using them as well, but we lack infrastructure to assess when this software is safe to use, that can keep up with the rate of change of open source development. Her talk will look at some of the challenges and approaches to building trust and confidence in open source used in safety critical software coming to new products. The approaches taken by 3 open source projects (Linux, Xen, Zephyr) will be discussed and contrasted.

At 12:30-1 pm, Pal Kastnes with Nordic Semiconductor, will give a presentation titled, “Bluetooth Security – A Technical Overview & Implementation Guide for Embedded Developers.” The Bluetooth specifications enable advanced security features to accommodate a wide variety of embedded applications and systems. This session will provide implementation guidelines to help embedded developers understand the range of security options available when developing with Bluetooth, as well as some best practices to follow when securing Bluetooth devices and solutions.

At 4-4:30 pm, Martin Woolley with Bluetooth SIG will give a presentation titled, “Bluetooth Location Services and High Accuracy Direction Finding.”Bluetooth can be used for many types of location service and it’s an area forecast to experience the biggest growth in the next few years, with 431 million location related devices shipping in 2023. In 2019, Bluetooth acquired a new capability which allows the direction of a signal to be accurately determined using one of two methods known as Angle of Arrival (AoA) or Angle of Departure (AoD). Come to this session and hear about this Bluetooth location services and the new direction finding feature, how it works and the uses it’s likely to be put to.

At 4-4:30 pm, Prof. Robert Oshana with NXP Semiconductors, will give a presentation titled, ” Guidelines, Tips and Tricks for Managing Open Source Software for Embedded Systems.” Open source software is ubiquitous in embedded computing. Whether you are using the Linux or Zephyr operating system, open source machine learning components, or any other form of community based software, its important to understand the basic guidelines and principles for developing and managing open source software. This presentation will use multiple actual industry examples to demonstrate practical tips and tricks for open source software development. Topics include developing an open source policy, understanding the basics of licensing open source software, how to update promptly, using a binary repo manager, how to particpate in the community and upstream software, how to use the proper build tools, tips for how and when to fork, and other practical examples. With the right framework and understanding, open source development for embedded systems can be more efficient, and less risky and error prone for the developer and the organization.

At 2-2:30 pm, Prof. Robert Oshana with NXP Semiconductors, is giving a presentation titled, “RISC-V Hardware and Software Technology for Industry.”  RISC-V is a free and open ISA enabling a new era of processor innovation through open standard collaboration. The RISC-V foundation now has close to 300 member companies and universities, and growing. This talk will focus on the state of the technology for RISC-V. We will discuss the latest developments in the RISC-V foundation regarding technology development, discuss some of the new communites like openHW Group that are dedicated to creating high quality open source RISC-V implementations for the masses. We will discuss industry adoption of RISC-V, using actual examples of how to incorporate RISC-V into a corporate design flow. We will discuss what is being done to manage hardware and software fragmentation in this growing community, and the state of the RISC-V ecosystem. We will show examples of how to innovate by using the powerful instruction extension capability of the ISA.

For more about the conference, visit the website.

OCTOBER 31, 2019 | 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM

This is a half-day, single-track event designed to introduce you to the leading Open Source RTOS built with safety and security in mind.  Attendees will learn why Zephyr is gaining the attention of  developers, with its support for BLE, OpenThread, LTE-M/NB-IoT cellular communications, and more. Learn about the latest security enhancements with Zephyr OS LTS, as well as the progress toward Functional Safety Certification.
In the second half of the session, attendees will receive hands-on experience with boards which have been graciously donated by Zephyr Platinum Member Nordic. Stay tuned for specifics.

How to Register:
Please add the Zephyr Mini-Summit to your current Open Source Summit Registration, for an additional fee of $50.

The Zephyr Project will be on-site at this year’s Embedded Linux Conference in Lyon, France on October 28-31. Join us at one of the 13 presentations given by Zephyr community leaders like BayLibre, Bluetooth SIG, Intel, the Linux Foundation, Nordic Semiconductor, PHYTEC Messtechnik GmbH, Synopsys and more!

Monday, October 28:

11:30 am – 12:05 pm – Bluetooth Mesh and Zephyr – Martin Woolley, Bluetooth SIG

This session will explain the fundamental technical concepts of Bluetooth mesh, including models, messages, publish/subscribe, node composition and security keys and will explore what’s involved in implementing firmware that uses Bluetooth mesh on the Zephyr RTOS platform. Add it to your schedule here.

12:20 – 12:55 pm – Multi-core Application Development with Zephyr RTOS – Alexey Brodkin, Synopsys

This presentation will examine multi-core application options and considerations using the Zephyr. We’ll start from exploration of use-cases where multiple CPU cores might be beneficial for deeply embedded system including both asymmetric & symmetric multiprocessing (AMP & SMP). Then we’ll discuss current state of multi-core support in Zephyr: what is already implemented and what’s still missing. And in the end we will highlight challenges associated with designing high performance software applications for multi-core hardware using samples on boards currently supported in upstream Zephyr project. Add it to your schedule here.

4:20 – 4:55 pm – Panel Discussion – Building Safe Systems with Open Source Software – Lukas Bulwahn, BMW AG; Kate Stewart, the Linux Foundation; Nicole Pappler, TUV SUD Product Service GmbH; Nicholas McGuire, OSADL; Paul Sherwood, CodeThink & Trustable

This panel will discuss the challenges on technology, software engineering, safety methods, organization and ecosystem when building safe systems with open-source software. Add it to your schedule here.

4:20 – 4:55 pm – Precision Timeouts in Zephyr: Past, Present and Future – Piotr Ziecik, Nordic Semiconductor

In this session, Piotr Zięcik will give insight into Zephyr timing infrastructure and cover recent activities aimed to improve real-time capabilities of this operating system, as well as compare the achieved performance with real-world requirements. Piotr Zięcik will also present plans for long-term evolution of Zephyr timing infrastructure. Add it to your schedule here.

6:00 – 6:35 pm – BoF: Multibuild for Zephyr RTOS – Marti Bolivar, Nordic Semiconductor

The Zephyr RTOS build system currently supports generating a single application image. This build is isolated from other related images, such as bootloaders, secure vs. nonsecure Arm TrustZone images, multi-core applications communicating via IPC mechanisms, etc. Different Zephyr downstream distributions have solved this problem in different ways, but there’s so far no consensus on how to solve this problem upstream. This BoF is meant to keep the conversation going among anyone who is interested in this topic. Add this to your schedule here.

Tuesday, October 29: 

2:25 – 3 pm – Zephyr OS Memory Protection – Andrew Boie, Intel 

In this presentation we describe the MPU-based memory protection features we have introduced in the Zephyr RTOS, showing novel techniques for working around the limitations of MPU hardware, implementing security domains in a physical memory map (no virtual memory), and maintaining API compatibility with platforms that do not have an MPU. We will show the permission management system to control access to kernel objects and device driver instances, and how both static and dynamically allocated kernel objects are managed. There will be some discussion on how global objects are routed to application memory domains and how we automatically manage size/alignment constraints of common MPU hardware. We will show how simple it is to define system calls. We have implemented futex-like capabilities to implement IPC mechanisms with no system calls required for uncontended locks. We will conclude with ongoing areas of development. Add it to your schedule here.

2:25 – 3 pm – Open Source and Functional Safety: Two Approaches to Bridge the Culture Clash – Kate Stewart, the Linux Foundation

This talk will summarize the current state of Zephyr and the project’s plans for going after Functional Safety certifications, while still handling any potential security issues. This will be contrasted with the ELISA project and how the team on ELISA is working towards new processes and tools to help Linux be confidently used in functional safety applications. Add it to your schedule here.

3:15 – 3:50 pm – A Dive into Zephyr Device Driver Model – Tomasz Bursztyka, Intel

Besides the kernel, the second most important part of an OS is how all peripherals are exposed to the user, finally enabling the OS to access the world outside of the CPU it is running on. Zephyr solves this by proposing a very simple yet flexible device driver model, deeply integrated with the device tree (DTS), making porting hardware to it efficient and easy. Through real use cases and from a developer perspective, this model will be explained as well as the life cycle of a device driver, whether it is native or ported from an existing HAL. Add it to your schedule here.

4:20 – 4:55 pm – Writing your own Gadget with Zephyr OS – Andrei Emeltchenko, Intel

In this talk, the author describes possible ways of connecting IOT devices using embedded boards running Zephyr OS, connected to host PC via USB. In particular, the following sample cases are explained: Export custom radios from Zephyr to Linux host (IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth) so that Zephyr board behaves as a radio adapter for Linux. Author outlines the possibility of making IP bridge out the Zephyr-based SOC board. The device in this scenario behaves like USB Ethernet controller using ECM or RNDIS protocols. Part of the presentation is dedicated to OS drivers for the Zephyr-based boards. Add it to your schedule here.

5:10 – 5:45 pm – Device Tree: Past, Present and Future – Neil Armstrong, BayLibre

Neil will present you the history of Device Tree from its origins, how it has been used for ARM and now RISC-V from the PowerPC codebase, all the very different current usage and an overview of its future application and evolutions. Add it to your schedule here.

5:10 – 5:45 pm – Building a Debug Probe with the Zephyr RTOS – Johann Fischer, PHYTEC Messtechnik GmbH

​The talk is about whether it would be possible (and how) to build a debug probe on top of the Zephyr RTOS. Zephyr already has a reasonably stable USB device stack with CDC-ACM and MSD support. The author will give a overview about the structure of debug probe software like DAPLInk, and the USB device stack in Zephyr. Furthermore, the author will introduce the implementation of the components and their interaction in Zephyr. Add it to your schedule here.

Wednesday, October 30: 

11:30 am – 12:05 pm – The Journey of Leading Open Source Engineering Team in China – Jocelyn Li, Intel

In this talk, Jocelyn will talk about the various challenges and share how she led the open source engineering team by changing her mindset, embracing the open source development model and role-modeling the way.
– Reluctant to discuss via mailing list
– Embracing community
– Submitting patches with good quality change log and code
– Discussion and debating
– Upstream vs Product

Add it to your schedule here.

2:25 – 3 pm – Running Linux on Constrained IoT Device – Rui Silva, Linaro and Tushar Khandelwal, Arm

This presentation will talk about the work we have been doing to do memory optimizations in Linux kernel and file systems and uses it to build an IoT device frameworks that run on a small platform with limited ram and XIP flash. Add it to your schedule here.

If you want more Zephyr, stay an extra day and attend the Zephyr Mini-Summit on Thursday, October 31. This half-day, single-track event designed to introduce you Zephyr and offer a hands-on experience with boards donated by Zephyr Project member Nordic Semiconductor. Please add the Zephyr Mini-Summit to your current Open Source Summit Registration.