XMOS and AWS launch SMP FreeRTOS for multicore processors

XMOS in collaboration with AWS, has announced the release of symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) FreeRTOS, enabling electronics manufacturers to build complex embedded systems faster and more easily than previously was the case.

With significant contributions from XMOS and other partners, this new SMP version marks what the companies involved are describing as a step-change in the capabilities of the FreeRTOS kernel, with verification and maintenance provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Driven by the community, the MIT-licensed open-source FreeRTOS is downloaded every 170 seconds by developers due to its ease of use, design reuse and speed.

FreeRTOS offers a homogenous and scalable programming interface that can run existing and future workloads and now, for the first time in an upstream version, developers can work within a familiar FreeRTOS environment using symmetric multiprocessing to programme multicore architectures – saving considerable time and money, and helping to improve speed to market.

SMP FreeRTOS will be available to use on XMOS’s xcore chipset, which brings together AI, control, communications and DSP in an affordable, performant package which is already widely used across a wide variety of applications.

XMOS’s recently released XTC tools, paired with the symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) implementation of FreeRTOS, takes advantage of xcore’s capabilities through easy-to-use industry standard software language and abstraction.

According to Mark Lippett, CEO, XMOS, “The SMP release of FreeRTOS means that developers can now use the flexibility of our xcore platform to architect custom solutions from the operating system. This is a major differentiation from other SoCs, which are substantially hard-coded in silicon. With full support for the C programming language, FreeRTOS and the deep learning framework TensorFlow-Lite, we ensure developers enjoy the benefits of xcore through comfortable and familiar programming models.

“Through our collaboration with Amazon Web Services, developers now have the opportunity to programme and adapt applications for the IoT quickly and easily. With this release, a full voice stack, for example, with different forms of compute (DSP, AI, etc) can be run on a homogeneous platform, simplifying development, testing, and maintenance of software, and ultimately reducing cost and time to market.”