RTOS Evolves to Ease Wireless IoT Device Design

by Rich Quinnell - EETimes

SEATTLE , Apr. 09, 2015 – 

Recognizing that the Internet of Things (IoT) will involve many non-traditional embedded systems developers, Texas Instruments has revised its TI-RTOS to incorporate automated power management and connectivity features that simplify IoT endpoint creation. The TI-RTOS v2.12 released today will help developers maximize battery life in TI SimpleLink and other wireless MCUs without being experts at "bare-metal" programming.

"TI believes that most future applications for microcontrollers will bt IoT ready," said TI's IoT Ecosystem Product Manager Nick Lethaby in an interview with EE Times. "And in addition to traditional embedded developers, there will be established makers of other product types as well of lots of folks from the cloud side all coming to IoT device development. Lots of those developers will be inexperienced in embedded and many of those with embedded experience will have domain expertise but not in ultra-low power or cloud communications."

As a result of this changing developer landscape, TI believes that the way MCU software development gets done will also change, Lethaby added. He indicated that "bare-metal" programming will give way to applications running on operating systems. And in the RTOS, use of embedded GUIs will decline as connected devices leverage smartphones and networked computing as input and display elements, and USB connectivity needs will decline. Connectivity and advanced power management for long battery life, on the other hand, will become essential features.

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