Getting Started with QNX Neutrino - QNX Software Systems

Who this book is for
© 2009, QNX Software Systems GmbH & Co. KG.
A little history
QSS, the company that created the QNX operating system, was founded in 1980 by
Dan Dodge and Gordon Bell (both graduates of the University of Waterloo in Ontario,
Canada). Initially, the company was called Quantum Software Systems Limited, and
the product was called “QUNIX” (“Quantum UNIX”). After a polite letter from
AT&T’s lawyers (who owned the “UNIX” trademark at the time), the product’s name
changed to “QNX.” Some time after that, the company’s name itself changed to “QNX
Software Systems” — in those days, everyone and their dog seemed to have a
company called “Quantum” something or other.
The first commercially successful product was simply called “QNX” and ran on 8088
processors. Then, “QNX 2” (QNX version 2) came out in the early 1980s. It’s still
running in many mission-critical systems to this day. Around 1991, a new operating
system, “QNX 4,” was introduced, with enhanced 32-bit operations and POSIX
support. In 1995, the latest member of the QNX family, QNX Neutrino, was
introduced.
On September 26th, 2000, the QNX Realtime Platform (consisting of the QNX
Neutrino operating system, Photon windowing system, development tools and
compilers, etc.) was released for free for noncommercial purposes. As of this second
printing (July 2001) there have been over 1 million downloads! (Go to
http://get.qnx.com/ to get your free copy.)
Who this book is for
What’s in this book?
This book is suitable for anyone wishing to gain a good fundamental understanding of
the key features of the QNX Neutrino OS and how it works. Readers with a modest
computer background should still get a lot out of the book (although the discussion in
each chapter gets more and more technical as the chapter progresses). Even diehard
hackers should find some interesting twists, especially with the two fundamental
features of QNX Neutrino, the message-passing nature of the operating system and the
way device drivers are structured.
I’ve tried to explain things in an easy-to-read “conversational” style, anticipating some
of the common questions that come up and answering them with examples and
diagrams. Because a complete understanding of the C language isn’t required, but is
definitely an asset, there are quite a few code samples sprinkled throughout.
This book introduces you to what the QNX Neutrino operating system is and how it
functions. It contains chapters covering process states, threads, scheduling algorithms,
message passing, operating system modularity, and so on. If you’ve never used QNX
Neutrino before, but are familiar with realtime operating systems, then you’ll want to
pay particular attention to the chapters on message passing and resource managers,
since these are concepts fundamental to QNX Neutrino.
8 Preface to the First Edition by Rob Krten April 30, 2009