PX5 RTOS vs QNX Neutrino RTOS

PX5 RTOS is a hard real-time operating system for resource-constrained embedded applications, with a native POSIX pthreads API. It is presented for safety-critical work in automotive, industrial, medical, rail, and other demanding settings. The maker says a minimal setup on typical 32-bit microcontrollers can use as little as 1KB of flash and 1KB of RAM. At 80MHz, most API calls and context switches are stated to take less than one microsecond; processing is described as predictable and independent of the number of active threads. Stated certifications include IEC 61508 SIL 4, IEC 62304 Class C, ISO 26262 ASIL D, and EN 50128 SW-SIL 4. Run-time checks cover function pointers, system objects, buffers, and stacks. Supported architectures include Arm Cortex-M, Cortex-R and Cortex-A, RISC-V, Renesas RX, AMD MicroBlaze, and Infineon TriCore. Listed tools include IAR, Eclipse/GCC, Arm DS, and Arm Keil. Pricing is on request; listed packages start at 5000.00 USD as a one-time fee or $5,000 a year for a subscription. Free evaluation kits are available with a free PX5 Community login.

QNX Neutrino RTOS is a real-time operating system for embedded applications, including medical instruments, routers, telematics devices, process-control systems, and air-traffic-control systems. Its microkernel architecture keeps drivers, applications, protocol stacks, and file systems outside the kernel in memory-protected user space. If a component fails, the system can terminate it, reclaim its resources, and restart components without rebooting. Networking technologies include IPv4, IPv6, IPSec, FTP, HTTP, SSH, and Telnet. QNX Momentics is an Eclipse-based development environment with memory-protection diagnostics and system tracing. The RTOS supports multiprocessing, transparent distributed processing, and POSIX-based application portability, and lists support for MIPS, PowerPC, SH-4, ARM, StrongArm, XScale, and x86. QNX Software Center manages downloads of QNX Software Development Platform versions 7.x and 8.x. The product is paid, with runtime licensing options available by contacting QNX sales; there is no free plan, but a 30-day trial is offered for evaluation and exploratory development, not commercial development. QNX describes its Safe Kernel as certified to IEC 61508 Safety Integrity Level 3.