VXWORKS Product Overview

The intelligent edge is rapidly transforming the development of software for highly deterministic, secure, and safe systems. New technologies and modern approaches are taking hold to increase developer productivity while maintaining the rigid requirements of devices and systems that must deliver determinism, high performance, and ultra-reliability.

VxWorks® is the industry’s most trusted and widely deployed real-time operating system (RTOS) for mission-critical embedded systems that must be secure and safe. It delivers a proven, real-time, and deterministic runtime combined with a modern approach to development. Regardless of industry or device type, companies building intelligent edge systems rely on the VxWorks pedigree of security, safety, high performance, and reliability.

KEY FEATURES

• Extensive multi-core and multiprocessing support: Use hardware to its fullest potential. VxWorks supports 32-bit and 64-bit multi-core processors based on Intel®, Arm®, Power, and RISC-V architectures. Its comprehensive processor support allows OS configurations for asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP), symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) with CPU affinity to address bound multiprocessing (BMP) scenarios, and hardware-optimized multi-core acceleration.
• OCI containers: Deploy applications at the speed of IT. Package and deploy all applications using IT-like tools and methods. Push your applications to standard container registries (such as Docker Hub, Amazon ECR, or Harbor) and pull them from your deployed VxWorks-based devices. Use Kubernetes for container orchestration.
• Security: Start with a foundation that adapts the security response to the threat. VxWorks integrates an extensive and continuously evolving set of security capabilities that map to the CIA triad. From booting operations to power down, these capabilities allow architects to develop a level of security appropriate for the attack surface and threats unique to their applications and environments.
• Certifiable: Meet regulatory requirements for your deployment. VxWorks has an extensive portfolio of safety certification history, including 600+ programs with more than 360 individual customers. Its robust safety features provide advanced time and space partitioning capabilities to enable reliable consolidation of multiple applications with different levels of criticality on a single or multi-core platform. Additionally, conformance to standards such as POSIX® and the FACE™ Technical Standard have been leveraged in the certification of VxWorks to DO-178C, IEC 61508, IEC 62304, and ISO 26262 safety standards.
• Rich connectivity and communications: Employ the broad range of communications necessary in a connected world. VxWorks supports IPv4 and IPv6 stacks, Routing Information Protocol (RIP), quality of service (QoS), and more. Additionally, VxWorks enables Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN), guaranteeing real-time communications and packet delivery within a bounded time or latency on a switched Ethernet network. VxWorks supports innovative industrial applications based on OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA). It also supports SocketCAN, used in automotive applications, and provides host, target, and OTG USB support.
• Broad board support: Speed time-to-market by beginning from a solid starting point. Working with our ecosystem of partners, we have optimized VxWorks for the latest advanced processors and SOCs. It also includes the most extensive list of board support packages in the embedded software industry, providing early prototyping, cost savings, and flexibility of choice.
• Customization and tuning: Enjoy immense flexibility in customizing your product. Tailor your design to your specific needs with access to full source code, and/or use all the various configuration options to include or exclude predefined components and/or parameters.
• Virtualization: Choose from a number of flexible deployment options, from native to cloud. VxWorks is available as a guest operating system for a variety of virtualization environments, including but not limited to Wind River® Helix™ Virtualization Platform, QEMU, VMware, and KVM.
• Fault-tolerant file system: Take advantage of integrated fault tolerance. VxWorks comes with a fault-tolerant file system that can be certified.
• Multimedia: Benefit from out-of-the-box UI support. VxWorks offers support for many standard graphic libraries, such as OpenGL, OpenGL ES, OpenCV, and Vulkan, as well as libraries that handle JPEG and PNG images.
• AI/ML: Digital transformation and creation of added value/service are at your fingertips. Technologies such as pandas, Tensorflow Lite, and others are integrated to easily add AI/ML applications into the device.
• Python: Your access is out of the box and fully enabled. VxWorks supports Python, an easy-to-learn programming language that is ideal for quick prototyping, testing, and integrating high-level programs.
• Feedback loop: Enjoy digital transformation enablement. VxWorks comes with a variety of communication protocols allowing developers to collect device information and send it to the cloud for mining and analysis.