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Operating System

Topic last updated 16 Mar 2010, by Paul Griffith. 4 replies
Martin Smith
04 Mar 2010

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but would the mbed be powerful enough to run an operating system? I'm thinking linux, or maybe windows 95, or one of the mobile phone OS?

Shoot me down in flames if this is crazy...

Dom Johnson
15 Mar 2010

Enough filesystem space for a stripped down version of Linux, but you may need other components. But then again, I know very little about microprocessors.

Anders Rundgren
15 Mar 2010

You need MUCH more RAM than MBED has in order to run a Linux kernel + drivers.

anders

Mark x
16 Mar 2010

I think this would be about as close as you could come...  Of course, I'm not even entirely sure this is a possibility.

http://www.smxrtos.com/

Paul Griffith
16 Mar 2010

It may be possible. Forget Linux; think OS-9.

OS-9 was originally designed for the Motorola 6809 and everything fitted into a single 64KB address space. The key features were the use of position independent, reentrant code modules and position independent data. This allowed the entire OS and all applications to be placed in, and executed from, ROM (or Flash). RAM was only used for the modules data and stacks.

For more details refer to Wikipedia.

Paul