The FreeRTOS Project

Twenty five official architecture ports - more than 77,500 downloads during 2009

* Immediate Free Download * Feature Rich * Easy To Use Pre-configured Projects * Can Be Used in Commercial Applications * Large User Community * Free Forum Support * Optional Commercial Licensing * Optional Commercial Support * Safety Critical Version Available * Expert Development Services * One RTOS for 25 Architectures * Smallest Footprint

FreeRTOS^TM is a portable, open source, royalty free, mini Real Time Kernel - a free to download and free to deploy RTOS that can be used in commercial applications without any requirement to expose your proprietary source code. Downloaded more than 77,500 times during 2008, FreeRTOS is the cross platform de facto standard for embedded microcontrollers.

Each official port includes a pre-configured example application demonstrating the kernel features, expediting learning, and permitting 'out of the box' development. Support is provided by an active user community.

OpenRTOS^TM is a commercially licensed and supported version of FreeRTOS that includes fully featured professional grade USB, file system and TCP/IP components.

SafeRTOS^TM is a SIL3 RTOS version that has been certified for use in safety critical applications. It is a functionally similar product for which complete IEC 61508 compliant development/safety lifecycle documentation is available (conformance certified by TÜV SÜD, including compiler verification evidence).

Latest news snippets:

A generic Cortex-M3 edition of the FreeRTOS eBook has been launched.
FreeRTOS is delighted to announce participation in the new IAR partner program.
PIC32 education kits are now available from the FreeRTOS shop. Education kits for other architectures will follow shortly.
An interview with Richard Barry has been published in Electronics Weekly.
Richard Barry is guest editor for Embedded.com.
FreeRTOS comes top in embedded.com survey (see last paragraph in link)!
FreeRTOS Interactive has been launched. The first part of its roll out allows users to both upload and download individual user contributed projects. User contributed projects have therefore been removed from the main FreeRTOS download, which is now at version 6.0.4. This permits the official (and supported) FreeRTOS download to significantly decrease in size. V6.0.4 also contains the first Energy Micro EFM32 demo application.
FreeRTOS now supports the SuperH from Renesas - complete with embedded web server demo application for the SH7216.
A new Cortex M3 / LPC17xx edition of the FreeRTOS eBook "Using The FreeRTOS Real Time Kernel - A Practical Guide" has been released.
Microchip publish an application note showing how to integrate their libraries and stacks with FreeRTOS.
More news snippets...

Embedded World photos: 1, 2, 3

"The new book is great, it provides very helpful easy to understand examples of FreeRTOS concepts. The book is also an easy read free of unexplained arcane language and concepts... Excellent!!!" - Darrell F.

"It's probably safe to say at this point that FreeRTOS goes through more 'peer-review' than any other RTOS available on the planet. I have used it in several projects - one of which was a multiprocessor environment that used more than 64 processors and needed to run for months reliably. The FreeRTOS core performed well. Take FreeRTOS for a spin." - John Westmoreland

Why choose FreeRTOS?

Here are some reasons why FreeRTOS is a good choice for your next application - FreeRTOS...

Provides one solution for many different architectures and development tools.
Is known to be reliable. Confidence is assured by the activities undertaken by the SafeRTOS sister project.
Is undergoing continuous active development.
Has a minimal ROM, RAM and processing overhead. Typically a kernel binary image will be in the region of 4K to 9K bytes.
Is very simple - the core of the kernel is contained in only 3 C files. The majority of the many files included in the .zip file download relate only to the numerous demonstration applications.
Is truly free for use in commercial applications (see license conditions for details).
Comes with a porting, platform development, or application development service should it be required.
Is well established with a large and ever growing user base.
Contains a pre-configured example for each port. No need to figure out how to setup a project - just download and compile!
Has an excellent and active free support forum.
Has the assurance that commercial support is available should it be required.
Provides ample documentation.
Is very scalable, simple and easy to use.
FreeRTOS offers a smaller and easier real time processing alternative for applications where eCOS, embedded Linux (or Real Time Linux) and even uCLinux won't fit, are not appropriate, or are not available.

Existing ports:

Altera

Supported processor families: Nios II
Supported tools: Nios II IDE with GCC

Atmel

Supported processor families: SAM3 (Cortex M3), SAM7 (ARM7), SAM9 (ARM9), AT91 and AVR32 UC3
Supported tools: IAR, GCC, Keil, Rowley CrossWorks

Cortus

Supported processor families: APS3
Supported tools: Cortus IDE with GCC

Energy Micro

Supported processor families: EFM32 (Cortex M3)
Supported tools: A demo project is provided for IAR, although this uses the standard Cortex M3 port so projects for GCC and Keil could also be created.

Freescale

Supported processor families: Coldfire V2, Coldfire V1, other Coldfire families, HCS12, PPC405 & PPC440 (Xilinx implementations) (small and banked memory models), plus contributed ports
Supported tools: Codewarrior, GCC, Eclipse

Fujitsu

Supported processor families: 32bit (for example MB91460) and 16bit (for example MB96340 16FX)
Supported tools: Softune

Luminary Micro / Texas Instruments

Supported processor families: All Luminary Micro Cortex-M3 based Stellaris microcontrollers
Supported tools: Keil, IAR, Code Red, CodeSourcery GCC, Rowley CrossWorks

Microchip

Supported processor families: PIC32, PIC24, dsPIC, (PIC18)
Supported tools: MPLAB C32, MPLAB C30, (MPLAB C18 and wizC)

Supported processor families: V850 (32bit), 78K0R (16bit)
Supported tools: IAR

Supported processor families: LPC1700 (Cortex M3), LPC2000 (ARM7)
Supported tools: GCC, Rowley CrossWorks, IAR, Keil, Red Suite, Eclipse

Renesas

Supported processor families: SuperH, H8/S plus contributed ports
Supported tools: GCC, HEW (High Performance Embedded Workbench)

Silicon Labs [ex Cygnal]

Supported processor families: Super fast 8051 compatible microcontrollers.
Supported tools: SDCC

Supported processor families: STM32 (Cortex M3), STR7 (ARM7), STR9 (ARM9)
Supported tools: IAR, GCC, Keil, Rowley CrossWorks

Supported processor families: MSP430
Supported tools: Rowley CrossWorks, IAR, GCC

Xilinx

Supported processor families: PPC405 running on a Virtex4 FPGA, PPC440 running on a Virtex5 FPGA, Microblaze
Supported tools: GCC

Supported processor families: Any x86 compatible running in Real mode only, plus a Win32 simulator
Supported tools: Open Watcom, Borland, Paradigm, plus Visual Studio for the WIN32 simulator

Contributed ports...

Contributed ports exist for Tricore, MICO32, Blackfin, Jennic, eZ80, SuperH and others. Contributed ports are provided "as is" and are not supported directly.

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Any and all data, files, source code, html content and documentation included in the FreeRTOS^TM distribution or available on this site are the exclusive property of Real Time Engineers Ltd.. See the files license.txt (included in the distribution) and this copyright notice for more information. FreeRTOS^TM and FreeRTOS.org^TM are trade marks of Real Time Engineers Ltd..