What Operating System is my Real-Time Controller Running and Why?

Primary Software: LabVIEW Modules>>LabVIEW Real-Time Module
Primary Software Version: 2009
Primary Software Fixed Version: N/A
Secondary Software: N/A

Problem:
What operating system is my real-time controller running, and why are there different real-time operating systems on different hardware targets?

Solution:
Each series of real-time targets runs on one of two real-time operating systems (RTOSes), IntervalZero Phar Lap ETS or Wind River VxWorks. The table below specifies the real-time operating system installed on each series of real-time controllers. You can also run the attached OSversion.vi on your real-time target to determine which RTOS it is running.

Controller Series	RTOS
FieldPoint	Phar Lap ETS
cFP-20xx	Phar Lap ETS
cFP-21xx	Phar Lap ETS
cFP-22xx	VxWorks
cRIO-900x	Phar Lap ETS
cRIO-901x	VxWorks
cRIO-902x	VxWorks
cRIO-907x	VxWorks
sbRIO-96xx	VxWorks
CVS-14xx	Phar Lap ETS
PXI[e]-81xx	Phar Lap ETS
NI 8353 RT	Phar Lap ETS
NI 17xx Smart Camera	VxWorks
Desktop ETS	Phar Lap ETS
NI 3110 with Hypervisor	Phar Lap ETS

The version of the real-time operating system is dependent on the version of LabVIEW Real-Time installed. The following Table specifies the real-time operating system version installed with different versions of LabVIEW Real-Time. The attached OSversion.vi will also return this information.

RTOS	LabVIEW Real-Time
Phar Lap ETS 9.1	7.1
Phar Lap ETS 10.1	8.0
Phar Lap ETS 12.0	8.2.1
Phar Lap ETS 13.0	8.5
Phar Lap ETS 13.1	8.5.1 - 8.6.1
NI ETS 2009 *	2009
VxWorks 6.1	8.2 - 8.2.1
VxWorks 6.3	8.5 - 8.6.1, 2009

* NI ETS 2009 is the same software as Phar Lap ETS 13.1. With the release of LabVIEW Real-Time 2009, National Instruments began to refer to the ETS operating system by release number instead of version number. This change will make it easier to identify which RTOS was released with each LabVIEW Real-Time version.

LabVIEW Real-Time support began on x86 based targets and used Phar Lap, now named ETS. ETS does not support PowerPC based targets, which have advantages over x86 for small embedded targets, so LabVIEW Real-Time added support for VxWorks.

From a programmer's point of view, it should make very little difference when you are writing your application. LabVIEW should run and execute the same on VxWorks based targets as it does on ETS and even Windows targets. However, some things are going to be different, such as calling external code which would have to be compiled differently. Some of the differences on a VxWorks target are laid out in KnowledgeBase 44HDTKQ0: Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for NI cRIO-901x and cRIO-907x. In general, you can run the same code on an ETS and a VxWorks target, it just needs to be recompiled for that target in LabVIEW.

OSversion.vi

Report Date: 05/28/2008
Last Updated: 02/12/2010
Document ID: 4LRA4IQ0

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