Product of the Week: BlackBerry’s QNX Software Development Platform 8.0

By Embedded Computing Design Staff

February 19, 2024

Mission critical applications and embedded design systems, from automotive infotainment systems and software-defined vehicles to industrial robots and other next-generation IoT systems, require the efficient operation of a software platform that makes real-time performance, safety and security, scalability, and reliability a priority.

The QNX Software Development Platform (SDP) 8.0 from BlackBerry features a fifth-generation architecture designed to support compute-intensive systems with an innovative microkernel design, the QNX operating system (OS) 8.0, support for the latest 64-bit ARM and x86 hardware platforms, and more.

BlackBerry’s QNX SDP 8.0 in Action

As the heart of the system, the QNX OS kernel supports support symmetric multiprocessing with CPU cores ranging from 4 to 64 cores, 133 million threads, and up to 16 TB of RAM to meet large datasets and complex computation needs.

As a solution for real-time systems and safety-critical applications, the OS features safe and secure interrupt handling, allowing the system to respond to outside needs in a timely manner. The scheduling policies also support the system’s ability to schedule tasks and properly allocate resources. The SMMU management feature further assists management over memory security and conversion.

Due to the criticality of the applications the QNX Software Development Platform is designed for, the OS supports a wide variety of security features such as POSIX permissions on files and processes, and POSIX access control lists (ACL) for resource control. Additionally, POSIX interprocess communication enables compatibility with applications developed with POSIX compliance.

Other security features include a random service generator secure boot, the QNX Trusted Disk (QTD) , Pathtrust, address space layout randomization (ASLR) and QNX Binary Security Check tool, OpenSSL 3, FIPS 140-2 crypto libraries, and much more.

Briefly, the networking features and functions include a IPv4/IPv6 multi-threaded network stack, unicast and multicast routing, packet filtering, IKE, Wi-Fi 6, and much more.

Getting Started with BlackBerry’s QNX SDP 8.0

Aside from the operating system, the QNX Software Development Platform 8.0 includes additional fundamental software solutions such as the QNX Tool Suite with the Eclipse-based QNX Momentics IDE, the QNX Toolkit for Microsoft Visual Studio Code, and the QNX Command Line Tools for managing files and libraries, as well as system profiling and debugging.

The QNX Software Center is also available as a software delivery tool for updates, product releases, and more.

For a closer look into the QNX software development platform 8.0, check out the video from the company below: