QNX Neutrino RTOS 7.1

For seven years, I was a software architect and used QNX Neutrino as part of my platforms. QNX Neutrino was the main operating system for one of the processors that we were using. I find it difficult to mention one specific thing about my main use case or how I was using QNX Neutrino in my projects, as it is a substantial stack of libraries, tools, and SDKs. I believe we were using most of it.

I was mainly involved in projects with product lifecycle and software architecture on that processor, deploying different in-house built platforms while referencing them to QNX Neutrino and stepping on QNX Neutrino itself. It is genuinely difficult to mention just one thing.

QNX Neutrino offers excellent features including debuggability. I would highlight traceability of the processes, configuration of the processes, network, memory layout, and so forth.

Out of those features, the traceability of the processes and the threads made my life significantly easier and was especially valuable in my projects. I was able to easily see when a thread was being actively used or when it was just looping without making any progress or when it was in idle. This was very helpful when we had to improve the startup of the system, as we were able to reduce it from twelve seconds to approximately two or three seconds just by analyzing how the threads were being started and their dependencies. This was one of the most useful features.

QNX Neutrino has positively impacted my organization because it was chosen as the main operating system for the products, at least for the graphical interface communication and for the application layer management. It was established as the best operating system for those kinds of platforms in my organization.

QNX Neutrino can be improved by simply continuing the good support and enhancing the toolsets.

While I cannot identify specific improvements needed for QNX Neutrino right now, something that could improve what I was doing would be to somehow analyze those threads. Instead of me going through the trace logger, it would be beneficial for QNX Neutrino to make automatic analysis and determine what the correct order of the startup of the processes should be in order to achieve the best startup of the system. I think that could be a valuable addition.

I have been using QNX Neutrino for approximately ten years.

Regarding specific outcomes, I cannot speak to that because when I started, we were already using QNX Neutrino. We were only updating it, building upon it, and reconfiguring different systems. I observed that QNX Neutrino was easy to work with and had very good support. Therefore, I cannot say if it was better than anything else.

I do not think I can give that kind of advice to others looking into using QNX Neutrino because it is very specific to the people that are using it, and it depends on everyone's specific needs, projects, and so forth. It is not advice that I would give in a general manner.

I would rate QNX Neutrino a nine on a scale of one to ten.

I give it a nine because I always operate with the idea that something could be improved, even if I do not know that it exists. I cannot give a perfect score just for that reason. It is certainly a better option than Linux for those kinds of projects.

I have no additional thoughts about QNX Neutrino.

QNX Neutrino is currently one of many trials that we are conducting for testing the best match for our different product lines as we have been experimenting and preparing for potential customer projects.

For example, we are using QNX Neutrino for developing one of our ADAS domain controller ECU, which is based on Texas Instruments TDA4 VM SOC, as a middleware stack on which we were deploying some of our performance algorithms.

That is the only use case that I have been personally involved with, and that is all I have to add about my use of QNX Neutrino in these projects.

I would say for the performance cores, QNX Neutrino offers enhanced security features compared to functional safety and security features when compared to any Linux alternatives.

We use our products for ADAS and automated driving, which are ASIL B to ASIL D level safety-critical applications, and QNX Neutrino helps us by providing certified middleware stacks so we don't have to do extensive testing on it, allowing us to focus only on the functions and algorithms. Using any open-source Linux would cause a lot of effort for us to test the overall software, so QNX Neutrino actually helps us reduce our effort and focus our software testing only on the functions and algorithms. It also offers virtual ECU type environments for a lot of testing even before integrating the whole software onto the actual hardware, thus saving us a lot of time later.

I cannot answer how QNX Neutrino can be improved as I don't have any pain points or areas I wish were better.

There is nothing that comes to my mind regarding needed improvements.

I have been using QNX Neutrino since 2024, although we haven't made any salable products with it, we have used it for most of our core development.

QNX Neutrino is stable.

I did not previously use a different solution before QNX Neutrino.

I haven't evaluated other options before choosing QNX Neutrino, as we were just experimenting with it.

There is nothing more that I would like to add about the features.

It's too early to say how QNX Neutrino has impacted my organization positively, as we haven't really noticed any significant advantages, but we are preparing for next-gen use cases. We haven't won any customer project where we had to use QNX Neutrino middleware stack, but we do have a lot of exposure to it right now, and when we win such businesses, we know we should be using QNX Neutrino.

I would say nothing specific regarding expectations or hopes for how QNX Neutrino could impact our team's workflow or efficiency if we move forward with it, as we already have other alternative solutions. One good thing that I can mention is that with the performance cores, like the A72 cores, we have very less mass production experience with them, so if we were to launch on a customer-selected SOC with performance cores, QNX Neutrino might give us some time savings because it has already proven middleware stack compared to Linux.

I gave this review a rating of 8.