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Inferno is a small and powerful operating system, ideal for use in embedded devices. Not only does it run on most popular processor architectures, Inferno comes complete with all you need for quickly developing advanced applications.

Supported Architectures
  • ARM (ARM32, Thumb)
  • Intel x86 (386 & higher)
  • PowerPC
  • SPARC
  •      Host Operating Systems
  • Windows NT/2000/XP
  • Irix
  • Linux
  • MacOS X
  • FreeBSD
  • Solaris
  • Plan 9
  • Supported Native Platforms

  • Brightstar Engineering ip-Engine1 MPC823+FPGA
  • Intrinsyc CerfCube-1110 SA1110
  • Intrinsyc CerfBoard-250 PXA250
  • Intrinsyc CerfCube-405EP IBM405EP
  • Embedded Planet (ex RPCG) RPXLite MPC823
  • Motorola FADS8xx MPC823/850
  • Compaq/HP iPAQ365x SA1110
  • Wincomm WPC660 x86
  • x86 Compatible PC

    Complete Development Environment
    Unlike many embedded operating systems, Inferno is a complete environment within which all application development may be done. The system comes with the Acme IDE, compiler and graphical debugger as well as full source code for the kernel and all applications. Furthermore, because Inferno can also run as an application on top of Windows, Linux and UNIX, you can develop your applications on the platform you choose with the knowledge that it will work on any target device running Inferno.

    Portable Applications
    Inferno applications are written in Limbo, a modern, safe, modular, concurrent programming language with C-like syntax and advanced interprocess synchronisation and communication facilities. It is more powerful than C but considerably easier to understand and debug than C++ or Java. Limbo code is compiled to produce Dis, an architecture independent bytecode which is then interpreted (or compiled on the fly) on the target processor. Limbo applications are completely portable across any platform running Inferno.

    Porting
    Porting Inferno to a new device based on one of the supported architectures is relatively simple compared to many operating systems. The Inferno kernel has been designed with a small, well defined interface between the parts of the system which are platform specific and those which are platform independent. The platform specific elements are essentially the parts of the device drivers which directly interact with and control the physical hardware. Device drivers are all written in C. Once support for the hardware devices has been provided, the compilation of the remainder of the kernel is straight forward.

    Compilers
    Inferno comes with a C cross-compiler suite originally developed by Bell Labs. The compiler suite is extremely compact (around 12,000 lines of code per architecture) and yet produces code that is comparable in terms of size and effeciency with much larger packages. The Inferno kernel and device drivers are all written in C.

    Your Requirements
    Vita Nuova can help you with all aspects of your embedded systems and applications development including: training, design and implementation. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

  • Development Tools
    Acme
    A powerful integrated development environment, includes editor, shell, advanced pattern matching tools & more

    Fast Limbo Compiler
    With full debugging output

    Graphical Debugger
    Step into executing code and browse variable states

    Comprehensive Shell
    With powerful scripting capabilities

    UNIX-like Commands
    Such as bind, grep, mount and yacc

    Limbo Modules
    Security
    Encrypted, authenticated connections, encryption & hash algorithms

    Networking
    Support for TCP/IP, UDP, FTP and SMTP

    Limbo/Tk
    Powerful graphical user interface toolkit, create sophisticated windows based applications quickly and easily

    Maths
    floating point operations, elementary and linear algebra functions

    Draw
    low level 32 bit graphics library with image compositing and alpha blending