[Cryptech Tech] arm

[Peter Gutmann]

=?UTF-8?B?Sm9hY2hpbSBTdHLDtm1iZXJnc29u?= <joachim at secworks.se> writes:

>There are actually quite a few RTOSes available as open projects. We have (we
>think) quite small requirements so a complete Linux-like system with stack
>should not be needed. As Rob stated we are also looking at mbed. I'm using
>mbed in another project and is fairly happy.

The reason for suggesting FreeRTOS specifically is that it's portable across
different CPUs, it's reasonably nice (as far as embedded OSes go, all embedded
OS development environments suck but some suck a lot less than others), and,
importantly, it has a reasonably decent commercial infrastructure around it.
If the goal is to build something that can be turned into a commercial product
by others then this is important, in fact the continued existence of things
like VxWorks are based on it.

Randy Bush <randy at psg.com> writes:

>as rob and joachim have pointed out, we do not think that we need cpu or
>memory allocation etc.  it just has to boot, get at a simple flash file
>system, and drive a usb.

Famous last words :-).  You always end up needing more than you think, and
it's a lot easier to start with a more capable OS and scale down than to start
with a bare-bones OS and scale up.

Peter.