Published release of RT-Thread 5.3, a real-time operating system (RTOS) for Internet of Things devices. The system has been developed since 2006 by a community of Chinese developers and is currently ported for 155 boards, chips and microcontrollers based on x86, ARM, MIPS, C-SKY, Xtensa, ARC and RISC-V architectures. The minimalistic build of RT-Thread (Nano) requires only 3 KB of Flash and 1.2 KB of RAM to operate. For IoT devices that are not very limited in resources, a full-featured version is offered that supports package management, configurators, a network stack, packages with the implementation of a graphical interface, voice control systems, DBMS, network services and engines for executing scripts. The code is written in C language and distributed under the Apache 2.0 license.
The operating system consists of three basic layers:
- The kernel, which ensures the execution of tasks in real time. The kernel provides generic core primitives covering areas such as lock management and data synchronization, task scheduling, thread management, signal handling, message queuing, timer management, and memory management. Hardware-specific features are implemented at the libcpu and BSP level, which include the necessary drivers and code to support the CPU.
- Components and services running on top of the kernel and offering abstractions such as a virtual file system, exception handling system, key/value storage, FinSH command line interface, networking stack (LwIP) and networking frameworks, device support libraries, audio subsystem, wireless stack, components to support Wi-Fi, LoRa, Bluetooth, 2G/4G. Modular architecture allows you to connect components and services depending on your tasks and available hardware resources.
- Software packages. General purpose software components and function libraries are distributed and installed in the form of packages. The repository currently includes over 450 packages, offering everything from GUIs