Atmel Corp. and SEGGER Microcontroller have launched the real time operating system (OS) embOS for the AVR32 microcontrollers. The AVR32 architecture from Atmel is specially designed to meet RTOS requirements with its fast multilevel interrupt controller, memory protection unit and the support for nested interrupts. The microcontroller has an energy efficiency of 1.08 DMIPS/MHz and delivers up to 83 Dhrystone MIPS (DMIPS) performance at 66MHz running from embedded flash.
The port of the embOS operating system from SEGGER to the AVR32 takes full advantage of the advanced architecture of the AVR32. embOS supports all four interrupt levels and fully nested interrupts with zero interrupt latency. The AVR32 offers a Supervisor mode and an Application Mode for programs. Unlike other OS, embOS runs application code (tasks) in Application Mode and the kernel and interrupts in Supervisor mode, allowing the application program to take advantage of the protection mechanism offered by AVR32. It also reduces the amount of RAM used for stack space and makes overall memory requirements for the stack very predictable. The embOS kernel needs only 2.5kB of program memory and 52 bytes of RAM, and offers a premium set of features for embedded applications.
