MPC Data is constantly evaluating technologies in order to provide our customers with the best solution to their particular business challenges. For many applications the QNX real-time Operating System, Neutrino, is a very attractive option. This is especially true where high reliability and/or deterministic real-time performance are critical.

MPC Data is a QNX Partner Network Member offering QNX services around hardware bring up, OS porting, device driver development, application design & development, testing and ongoing support.

Neutrino has a message based micro-kernel architecture: an approach that has proven to be reliable and predictable. This is one of the features which make it particularly suitable for use in roles where high availability and guaranteed response times are critical. Target markets include Telematics, automation, and networking. Neutrino is available for x86, SH-4, MIPS, ARM, DaVinci and PowerPC.

In summary Neutrino offers the following key features:

Predictable, Resilient, Scalable
Highly tuneable performance
Full SMP support
POSIX standard 1003.1-2001 API
Transparent Distributed Processing
Photon microGUI
eXecute In Place
Flash File system support
Linux, DOS and network file system support

Existing applications can usually be ported quite readily to a QNX platform, but in order to realise the full benefits they should be enhanced to take advantage of Neutrino's High Availability Manager (HAM). By using HAM it is possible to make your applications and the sub-systems they rely upon fault tolerant. HAM provides fault notification and failure recovery mechanisms that ensure in the event of a failure that applications are back up and running as quickly as possible. MPC Data's staff has a great deal of expertise in cross-platform porting, and of building in HAM support.

MPC Data has been working with version 6.2 of Neutrino since it was first released, and recent projects include a major platform porting exercise onto custom PowerPC-based hardware for PicoChip Designs Limited. The resulting platform is a reference design for 3G Cellular Telecoms infrastructure, which gave us another opportunity to demonstrate that we can handle a large QNX Neutrino development. As well as the basic platform configuration task, the project included porting existing hardware device drivers and API libraries from VxWorks to QNX Neutrino. PicoChip's Senior Applications Engineer said: "MPC Data's knowledge of the QNX Neutrino operating system and tools have helped us to meet very ambitious timescales. Thanks to them our client will receive a high quality package in an impressively short timeframe. We're delighted with the service they provided."

If you would like to know more about MPC Data and the services that we offer, or would like unbiased consultation on possible technical and business solutions please contact us.