H8S RTOS support for eCos released

The eCos operating system is a lightweight open-source OS that leverages the tools developed for Linux, but doesn’t require the code space or CPU performance that larger Operating Systems require. Details are here . It is mostly used for Ethernet connectivity in small embedded applications.

Uwe Kindler of cetoni GmbH +has developed a port of +eCos to H8S microcontroller architecture. The port includes various variant and platform ports (i.e. for EDOSK2674) and a number of drivers (i.e. Serial, Network, RTC...). cetoni also hosts a prebuild h8300-elf toolchain for eCos (Cygwin only) and a detailed + +porting guide for H8S variant and platform ports.

This is not Renesas endorsed or funded, as far as I know. Older versions of ECos for the 2674R EDOSK boards have been around for at least two years, but they were not as well documented as this version, and didn’t contain a porting guide.



An interesting note is that Uwe ran Dhrystone 2.1 Benchmarks on his eCos system and got 2.4 VAX MIPS rating for our chip running at 33mhz (with external RAM and FLASH.) This is considerable lower than we’d expect on that MCU – but factors like the GNU compiler performance and external memory may explain the low number.