QNX Beats Wind River and Microsoft in RTOS Shootout

[System]

Tao intent has a RTOS that runs *on top of* the Virtual Processor layer.  It is an RTOS that provides multitasking, memory management, IPC, etc.  It is realtime altough that may mean "soft" realtime.  Soft realtime (like BeOS) means it is great for media, but maybe not warheads.  intent RTOS may infact be hard realtime, I just don't know.

The intent RTOS is written in VP code so only the VP layer needs to be ported to another machine.  Device drivers are native to the intent OS and are written in VP or C compiled into VP binaries.  The same driver will work on x86 or PowerPC *without* a recompile.  Only the VP layer needs porting

QNX is a great RTOS, but Amiga and Tao have a smarter solution in the portable intent RTOS.  The entire history of binary compatibily problems have, poof!, disappeared.  Yes, even for the OS and drivers.

One thing that the intent RTOS does not have is a desktop.  QNX has a nice desktop.  But Amiga will provide the desktop which is already very mature.  It was mature before the others were born

[System]

I know both Amiga and Hyperion have said AmigaDE will be incorporated into AOS4.2, but crucially we have heard no such statements from TAO, and yet it is TAO who would have to do the porting, because I haven't heard anything to indicate that Amiga Inc have any license to do any porting themselves.

Amiga certainly has a license to port intent to AmigaOS for PowerPC.  I have spoken with Tao and their license is very simple.  One buys an SDK for a particular hardware platform.  Tao provides the VP layer for the native CPU.  The licensee can deploy it as a stand-alone operating system or as an application on another OS.  Whatever method is chosen, the RTOS (and it is called "RTOS" by Tao) is always running.  The graphical environment, sometimes called elate, is actually a full RTOS with its own VP, memory model, multi-threading system, etc.

Really AmigaOS has two choices:  Port intent to AmigaOS for PowerPC or port AmigaOS to intent and then run intent on the bare hardware.

Now, some of you are getting kind of lippy.  I don't know much, but I have purchased a license for the AmigaDE SDK and the Tao intent ADK 1.3.1.  I have programmed a bit on each.  I have had 3 telephone conversations with folks at Tao and some email correnspondance.  I have been accessing documents on the Tao developer website.  These are not amazing credentials, but they are more than info gleaned from forums and news groups.

I do not know any plans that Amiga, Inc. has.  What I do know is that by the nature of Tao licensing, they can do whatever they please with intent technology as long as they pay their licensing fees.  The same offer is available to you or I.  I can't afford it right now, but at least I know what it takes to license intent because I picked up the phone and asked them.

Pax

[System]

I can confirm that Amiga has full support from Tao to integrate the AmigaDE into AmigaOS.  :-D

QNX Neutrino is a fantastic kernel, and would have been a good basis for a new Amiga-like OS. Photon, the GUI used by QSSL isn't anything like AmigaOS and was never really  intended to be used as a basis to build an Amiga GUI.

QSSL has some very smart coders, but one thing bothered me when I attended a QSSL conference in Eindhoven. When they demonstrated Quake Arena running on QNX RTP, Dan Dodge (CEO) stated that they ported this because Amiga fans are mostly fond on games. His tone was a little degrading and I had the feeling that he was making fun of the community...

Some people from another company, called Millar I believe, also confronted Dan for his attitude towards the Amiga community. Fact is that most of the gamers nowadays own a Playstation and the remaining people are often computing professionals, like graphic artists. I don't like it when he spreads degrading tones towards our community during their world tour. Tao executives show far more respect towards our community!