This book puts the spotlight on how a real-time kernel works using Micrium’s μC/OS-III as a reference. The book consists of two complete parts. The first describes real-time kernels in generic terms. Part II provide examples for the reader, using Texas Instruments’ EVM-EVALBOT, a small, robotic evaluation board. The board is based on the Stellaris LM3S9B92 which combines the popular ARM Cortex-M3® architecture with Ethernet MAC+PHY, USB OTG (On-The-Go), and I2S. Together with the IAR Systems Embedded Workbench for ARM development tools, the evaluation board provides everything necessary to enable the reader to be up and running quickly, as well as a fun and educational experience, resulting in a high-level of proficiency in a short time.

This book is written for serious embedded systems programmers, consultants, hobbyists, and students interested in understanding the inner workings of a real-time kernel. μC/OS-III is not just a great learning platform, but also a full commercial-grade software package, ready to be part of a wide range of products.

μC/OS-III is a highly portable, ROMable, scalable, preemptive real-time, multitasking kernel designed specifically to address the demanding requirements of today’s embedded systems. μC/OS-III is the successor to the highly popular μC/OS-II real-time kernel but can use most of μC/OS-II’s ports with minor modifications. Some of the features of μC/OS-III are:

Preemptive multitasking with round-robin scheduling of tasks at the same priority
Supports and unlimited number of tasks and other kernel objects
Rich set of services: semaphores, mutual exclusion semaphores with full priority inheritance, event flags, message queues, timers, fixed-size memory block management, and more. Built-in performance measurements