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T-Kernel CPU Support

Written by: Mohit Sindhwani (Viometrix Private Limited)

For a few hours every year, I lecture at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore as part of a Masters module in the Principles of Embedded Systems. One of the topics I cover is Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOS) and the issues that developers must think about when selecting an RTOS for their project. Naturally, for a company that develops a number of products, often CPU support is a key issue when selecting an RTOS. If the RTOS supports a number of CPUs that the company uses, it helps amortize the costs of training the staff in being competent with the RTOS. At the same time, it becomes easier to move engineers between product teams and the company, due to the combined strength of its products, is a bigger client to the RTOS vendor and can usually extract business benefit (costs, support, etc.) from the relationship.

Operating systems such as Linux are well known for the broad-ranging processor support they enjoy thanks to the open source developer community that has zealously ported the OS to different platforms. But, I realized that although the T-Kernel does support a healthy list of processors in a number of processor families from different vendors, there does not really seem to be a list anywhere. That’s why this article lists out the processor families that are currently supported by the T-Kernel. The information has been collected from a number of online resources (websites of PMC, Renesas, NEC, T-Engine Forum, etc.) as well as browsing through press releases and walking around in the TRON Shows. The online resources are linked at the end of the article.

Processors Supported by the T-Kernel

At this time, the T-Kernel runs on most of the popular 32-bit embedded processor cores such as ARM, MIPS, SH, PPC and even x86 and the soft-core Nios-II processors. Based on my search, the T-Kernel has been ported to and runs on the following processors:

  • Altera Nios-II (soft-core CPU)
  • ARM7ARM720T, ARM7TDMI, ARM7-AT91 (from ATMEL, Sharp…)
  • ARM9ARM922T, ARM926EJ-S, ARM920, i.MX1, i.MX21 (from Epson, Fujitsu, Freescale, Sharp, …)
  • Fujitsu FR – FR MB91403
  • Infineon TriCore TC1775, TC1130
  • Intel X86 (includes Intel Pentium, Celeron, AMD Geode, etc.)
  • Intel XScale PXA270
  • NEC V850V850E-MA3
  • NEC MIPSVR5500, VR4131, VR5701
  • PowerPC – Power PC405 (Xilinx Virtex 4)
  • Renesas SH2SH7619, SH7145, SH7211
  • Renesas SH2ASH7211
  • Renesas SH3-DSP – SH7727, SH7720
  • Renesas SH4SH7751R, SH7760
  • Renesas SH4ASH7780
  • Renesas SH Mobile – SH7722
  • Renesas M32RM32104, M32192
  • Toshiba MIPSTX4956

Relevant Links

If you want to find out more about the above processors, there is more information on the pages below:

[1] Renesas – T-Engine Solutions

http://www.renesas.com/fmwk.jsp?cnt=product_lineup.htm&fp=/products/tools/system_solutions_reference_platforms/t_engine_solution_engine/child_folder/&title=CPU%20Boards%20)

[2] Personal Media Corporation’s Press Release that includes a list of CPUs they support

http://www.personal-media.co.jp/press/press/061115_tkx86.html

[3] NEC T-Engine Solutions

http://www.necel.com/micro/ja/development/asia/t-engine/index.html

[4] SH/M32R T-Kernel Homepage

http://www.superh-tkernel.org/eng/download/t-monitor/index.html

[5] T-Kernel Download Page (in Japanese)

http://www.t-engine.org/T-Kernel/tkernel.html