BlackBerry Tablet OS

BlackBerry Tablet OS
Developer BlackBerry Limited
OS family QNX (Unix-like)
Working state Active (Only receive updates)
Source model Closed source, some open source components
Initial release April 19, 2011
Latest release
WiFi

2.1.0.1917 (March 31, 2014 (2014-03-31)) [±][1]

LTE
2.1.0.1917 (March 31, 2014 (2014-03-31)) [±][1]
Latest preview 2.1.0.840[2] / August 14, 2012 (2012-08-14)
Marketing target Consumer and Business
Available in Multilingual
Update method OTA
Platforms BlackBerry Playbook (ARM)
Kernel type Real Time Microkernel (QNX)
License EULA
Preceded by none
Official website blackberry.com/playbook-tablet

BlackBerry Tablet OS is an operating system from BlackBerry Ltd based on the QNX Neutrino real-time operating system designed to run Adobe AIR and BlackBerry WebWorks applications, currently available for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer. The BlackBerry Tablet OS is the first tablet running an operating system from QNX (now a subsidiary of RIM[3]).

BlackBerry Tablet OS supports standard BlackBerry Java applications. Support for Android apps has also been announced, through sandbox "app players" which can be ported by developers or installed through sideloading by users.[4][5] A BlackBerry Tablet OS Native Development Kit, to develop native applications with the GNU toolchain is currently in closed beta testing. The first device to run BlackBerry Tablet OS was the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet computer.[6]

A similar QNX-based operating system, known as BlackBerry 10, will replace the long-standing BlackBerry OS on handsets after version 7.[7]

Multitasking

Several features of the OS make it particularly suited for multi-tasking on multi-core devices.

Hard real time allocation

The micro-kernel architecture operating system provides hard real-time multitasking. QNX was one of the first POSIX operating systems to employ the technique of hard time allocation on a fixed clock cycle. The kernel will visit each and every task at least once every cycle, for instance every 20 milliseconds (or 50 frames per second, in graphics terms), to be sure that no task is not attended (or no object entirely unrendered, in graphics terms). This model achieves most of the advantages of the interrupt-driven and polling approaches to multi-tasking. QNX Neutrino kernel calls support threads, message passing, signals, clocks, timers, interrupt handlers, semaphores, mutual exclusion locks (mutexes), condition variables (condvars) and barriers. The kernel is built on these only, making QNX "fully preemptible, even while passing messages between processes; it resumes the message pass where it left off before preemption." This alleviates problems of sudden power-outs or user actions that force resources to be swapped out of working memory – common in tablet applications.[8]

“Bound multiprocessing”

The micro-kernel was designed for distributed processing, which reduces heat and energy usage by comparison to monolithic architectures such as Linux. The ability to lock software tasks to specific cores, under the control of a single copy of the OS, lets all resources be "dynamically allocated and shared among applications. During application initialization, however, a setting determined by the system designer forces all of an application’s threads to execute only on a specified core" thus reducing inter-processor communications overhead and keeping the bus clear.[9] This approach lies between symmetric multiprocessing and asymmetric multiprocessing.

Version history

Version 1.0.1

Version 1.0.3

Version 1.0.5

Version 1.0.6

Version 1.0.7

Version 1.0.8

Version 2.0 (Beta)

Version 2.0

Version 2.0.1

Version 2.1.0 (Beta)

Version 2.1.0 (Current)

Version 10.0 (Cancelled)

In January 2013, BlackBerry CEO, Thorsten Heins, confirmed rumours that BB10 would be made available for all existing BlackBerry Playbooks. However, in June, Heins cancelled the update, stating that he "wasn't satisfied with the level of the experience".[11] Heins commented on the reasons for the decision the following month, explaining that BB10 really needed 2GB of memory to function well and that, due to the design of the Playbook, it wasn't practical to replace or upgrade the memory.[12]

See also

References

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Monday, February 15, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.