Getting Started with QNX Neutrino - QNX Software Systems

© 2009, QNX Software Systems GmbH & Co. KG.
A few years after I started using computers, the very first IBM PC came out. I must
have been one of the first people in Ottawa to buy this box, with 16 KB of RAM and
no video card, because the salesman wasn’t experienced enough to point out that the
machine would be totally useless without the video card! Although the box wasn’t
useful, it did say “IBM” on it (at the time reserved solely for mainframes and the like),
so it was impressive on its own. When I finally had enough money to buy the video
card, I was able to run BASIC on my parents’ TV. To me, this was the height of
technology — especially with a 300 baud acoustically coupled modem! So, you can
imagine my chagrin, when my friend Paul Trunley called me up and said, “Hey, log in
to my computer!” I thought to myself, “Where did he get a VAX from?” since that
was the only conceivable machine I knew about that would fit in his parents’ house
and let you “log in” to. So I called it up. It was a PC running an obscure operating
system called “QUNIX,” with a revision number less than 1.00. It let me “log in.” I
was hooked!
What has always struck me about the QNX family of operating systems is the small
memory footprint, the efficiency, and the sheer elegance of the implementation. I
would often entertain (or bore, more likely) dinner guests with stories about all the
programs running concurrently on my machine in the basement, as we ate. Those who
were knowledgeable about computers would speculate about how huge the disk must
be, how I must have near infinite memory, etc. After dinner, I’d drag them downstairs
and show them a simple PC with (at the time) 8 MB of RAM and a 70 MB hard disk.
This would sometimes impress them. Those who where not impressed would then be
shown how much RAM and disk space was still available, and how most of the used
disk space was just data I had accumulated over the years.
As time passed, I’ve had the privilege of working at a number of companies, most of
which were involved with some form of QNX development; (from telecoms, to
process control, to frame grabber drivers, ...),with the single most striking
characteristic being the simplicity of the designs and implementation. In my opinion,
this is due to the key engineers on the projects having a good understanding of the
QNX operating system — if you have a clean, elegant architecture to base your
designs on, chances are that your designs will also end up being clean and elegant
(unless the problem is really ugly).
In November, 1995, I had the good fortune to work directly for QNX Software
Systems (QSS), writing the training material for their two QNX Neutrino courses, and
presenting them over the next three years.
It’s these past 19 years or so that gave me the inspiration and courage to write the first
book, Getting Started with QNX 4 — A Guide for Realtime Programmers, which was
published in May, 1998. With this new book on QNX Neutrino, I hope to share some
of the concepts and ideas I’ve learned, so that you can gain a good, solid
understanding of how the QNX Neutrino OS works, and how you can use it to your
advantage. Hopefully, as you read the book, light bulbs will turn on in your head,
making you say “Aha! That’s why they did it this way!”
April 30, 2009 Preface to the First Edition by Rob Krten 7