Real-time operating systems transform a microcontroller from a sequential program executor into a deterministic, concurrent system capable of managing dozens of tasks with microsecond-level timing guarantees. But a poorly designed RTOS architecture is worse than no RTOS at all — priority inversion, stack overflow, deadlock, and missed deadlines are subtle bugs that only surface under load or in the field.
Codewave Labs engineers have designed RTOS architectures for industrial motor controllers, medical devices, aerospace data recorders, and automotive ECUs. We understand the difference between a task and an ISR, why you never call vTaskDelay() from an interrupt, and how to use a watchdog timer correctly with an RTOS scheduler.
We also specialise in RTOS migration — moving legacy bare-metal code onto an RTOS without breaking existing behaviour — and in RTOS debugging using trace tools like Percepio Tracealyzer and SEGGER SystemView.
Task decomposition, priority assignment, stack size analysis, CPU load estimation, and inter-task communication design (queues, semaphores, event groups, stream buffers).
Rate Monotonic Analysis (RMA), Worst-Case Execution Time (WCET) analysis, jitter measurement, tick resolution tuning, and deadline miss detection.
Porting FreeRTOS/Zephyr to new hardware targets, writing port layers for new compilers, integrating RTOS with existing HAL code, and BSP bringup.
Tracealyzer and SystemView integration for task-level tracing, stack watermark monitoring, deadlock detection, and CPU utilisation profiling.
SAFERTOS (IEC 61508 SIL3), FreeRTOS Safety Qualification Kit, Azure RTOS ThreadX with safety certification artifacts for ISO 26262 and IEC 62443.
MPU region configuration for memory protection, heap management (heap_4/heap_5/heap_6), stack overflow detection, and fragmentation-free memory strategies.
Identify timing constraints, task periods, deadlines, and hardware interrupt latency requirements before any design decisions.
Task decomposition document, priority table, IPC design, shared resource analysis, and CPU budget allocation.
Coding, hardware-in-loop testing with trace tools enabled from day one, systematic stack sizing, and mutex/semaphore audits.
Worst-case response time measurement, stress testing, Tracealyzer analysis, and certification artifact generation if required.
Tell us about your project — hardware platform, current challenges, timeline, and goals. First consultation is always free. We typically respond within 1 business day.