Tock Logo

Talking Tock

Talking Tock 29

1.0 release, imix and more

This is the 29th post in a series tracking the development of Tock, a safe multi-tasking operating system for microcontrollers.

  1. Tock 1.0
  2. imix
  3. Pull Requests
    1. Merged
      1. Thread/6lowpan
      2. Tock 1.0
      3. Build System
      4. Miscellenia
    2. Proposed
      1. Thread/6lowpan

Tock 1.0

We announced version 1.0 of the Tock system call ABI. It includes the binary format of processes on flash, the semantics and behavior of the five system calls, and the driver interface exposed through system calls for a basic set of portable interfaces.

The goal is to be able to write cross-platform processes that will run on any Tock kernel that is 1.0 compliant. For this version, stability means that those interfaces will not change until, at least, the next major version. In other words, if you write a process to that uses only the stable drivers and it doesn’t work as expected, it’s either a bug in the kernel or a bug in the userland library (and we appreciate bug reports ♥).

imix

Remember imix? It’s a development board we’ve been using for Tock at Stanford and Berkeley (formerly Michigan), specifically for working on BLE, 802.15.4 and power management. It’s similar to Hail with the addition of an RF233 802.15.4 radio, separate power domains for each radio, the MCU, sensors and an external RNG, and as many headers as possible to make power measurement and debugging easier.

Well, it’s finally ready for prime time. We’re confident enough in version 2.1 that we made enough for others too this time. The fab just shipped the boards last night and they’ll be debuted at the SOSP tutorial at the end of the month.

Pull Requests

Merged

Thread/6lowpan

Tock 1.0

Build System

Miscellenia

Proposed

Thread/6lowpan