What type of os in firmware is designed to manage a specific device like a video game console?

nine.2 Operating Systems

Learning Objectives

After studying this section you should exist able to practice the following:

1. Understand what an operating system is and why computing devices require operating systems.
2. Appreciate how embedded systems extend Moore’due south Law, allowing firms to create “smarter” products and services

Computing hardware needs to be controlled, and that’s the role of the operating system. The operating organisation (sometimes chosen the “OS”) provides a common set up of controls for managing estimator hardware, making it easier for users to interact with computers and for programmers to write application software. Just about every computing device has an operating arrangement—desktops and laptops, enterprise-class server computers, your mobile telephone. Fifty-fifty specialty devices like iPods, video game consoles, and television set peak boxes run some grade of OS.

Some firms, similar Apple and Nintendo, develop their own proprietary OS for their own hardware. Microsoft sells operating systems to anybody from Dell to the ATM manufacturer Diebold (heed for the familiar Windows fault beep on some cash machines). And there are a host of specialty firms, such as Wind River (purchased past Intel), that help firms develop operating systems for all sorts of devices that don’t necessarily look like a PC, including cars, video editing systems, and fighter jet control panels.

Anyone who has used both a PC and a Mac and has noticed differences across these platforms can get a sense of the breadth of what an operating system does. Even for programs that are otherwise identical for these ii systems (like the Firefox browser), subtitle differences are visible. Screen elements like menus, curlicue bars, and window borders look dissimilar on the Mac than they do in Windows. And so practice the dialogue boxes that show upwards when you print or relieve.

These items wait and behave differently because each of these functions touches the hardware, and the team that adult Microsoft Windows created a organization distinctly different from their Macintosh counterparts at Apple. Graphical

user interface (UI)

items like curl bars and menus are displayed on the hardware of the computer display. Files are saved to the hardware of a difficult drive or other storage device. Most operating systems also include command panels, desktop file direction, and other support programs to work directly with hardware elements similar storage devices, displays, printers, and networking equipment. The Macintosh Finder and the Windows Explorer are examples of components of these operating systems. The consequent look, experience, and functionality that operating systems enforce beyond various programs help make it easier for users to learn new software, which reduces preparation costs and operator mistake. See
Figure nine.2
for similarities and differences.

Figure 9.2

Differences between the Windows and Mac operating systems are evident throughout the user interface, particularly when a programme interacts with hardware.

Operating systems are also designed to requite programmers a common prepare of commands to consistently collaborate with the hardware. These commands make a developer’southward chore easier by reducing programme complication and making it faster to write software while minimizing the possibility of errors in code. Consider what an OS does for the Wii game developer. Nintendo’southward Wii Os provides Wii programmers with a set of common standards to use to access the Wiimote, play sounds, describe graphics, save files, and more than. Without this, games would be a lot more than difficult to write, they’d probable look differently, be less reliable, would price more, and there would be fewer titles available.

Similarly, when Apple provided developers with a common set up of robust, easy-to-apply standards for the iPhone and (via the App Shop) an easy way for users to install these applications on top of the iPhone/iPod touch OS, software evolution boomed, and Apple became hands-down the most versatile mobile computing device available1. In Apple’s case, some
50 m apps
became available through the App Store in less than a yr. A proficient OS and software development platform can catalyze network furnishings (run into
Chapter six “Understanding Network Effects”). While the OS seems geeky, its effective design has very strategic business organisation implications!

Figure 9.three
Operating System Market Share for Desktop, Server, and Mobile Phones

Data provided by HitsLink Market Share, Forrester Research, IDC, and AdMobtwo.

Firmware and Embedded Systems

Most personal computers take an operating system installed on their hard drives. This system allows the Bone to be replaced or upgraded easily. But many smaller, special-purpose computing devices have their operating systems installed on nonvolatile memory, frequently on read-simply retentivity (ROM) chips. Control programs stored on chips are sometimes referred to equally

firmware
. The OS in an iPod, mobile phone, or your TV’s prepare-height box is about likely stored every bit firmware. Your PC likewise has a tiny scrap of firmware that allows it to practise very basic functions like start-up (boot) and begin loading its operating system from disk.

Another term you might hear is

embedded systems
. As computing gets cheaper, special-purpose applied science is increasingly becoming embedded into all sorts of devices like cars, motion picture frames, aircraft engines, photocopiers, and heating and air conditioning systems. The software programs that make up embedded systems are often stored as firmware too.

Moore’s Law (see
Chapter 5 “Moore’s Law: Fast, Cheap Computing and What It Ways for the Managing director”) enables embedded systems, and these systems can create real strategic value. The Otis Elevator Company, a sectionalization of United Technologies, uses embedded systems in its products to warn its service centers when the business firm’due south elevators, escalators, and moving walkways need maintenance or repair. This alarm provides Otis with several fundamental benefits:

1. Since products automatically contact Otis when they need attending, these systems generate a lucrative service business for the firm and arrive more difficult for third parties to offering a competing business organization servicing Otis products.
2. Products contact service technicians to perform maintenance based on exact needs (east.g., lubricant is low, or a role has been used plenty to be replaced) rather than guessed schedules, which makes service more than cost-effective, products less probable to break down, and customers happier.
3. Whatever product failures are immediately detected, with embedded systems typically dispatching technicians before a customer’s telephone call.
4. The data is fed back to Otis’s R&D group, providing information on reliability and failure so that engineers can utilise this info to blueprint better products.

Collectively, software embedded on tiny chips yields very big benefits, for years helping Otis remain at the top of its industry.

Primal Takeaways

• The operating organization (OS) controls a computer’south hardware and provides a common set of commands for writing programs.
• Virtually computing devices (enterprise-course server computers, PCs, phones, set up-top boxes, video games, cars, the Mars Rover) take an operating system.
• Some products utilize operating systems provided past commercial firms, while others develop their own operating system. Others may leverage open source alternatives (run into
  Chapter ten “Software in Flux: Partly Cloudy and Sometimes Free”).
• Embedded systems are special-purpose computer systems designed to perform i or a few defended functions, and are frequently built into conventional products like cars, air conditioners, and elevators.
• Embedded systems can make products and services more efficient, more reliable, more functional, and can enable unabridged new businesses and create or reinforce resources for competitive reward.

Questions and Exercises

1. What does an operating system practise? Why do you demand an operating system? How do operating systems make a developer’southward job easier? How exercise operating systems brand life easier for finish users?
2. How has the market for desktop, server, and mobile operating systems changed in recent years? Practice sure products seem to be gaining traction? Why do you think this is the instance?
3. What kinds of operating systems are used in the devices that you own? On your personal calculator? Your mobile telephone? The set-top box on tiptop of your television? Are at that place other operating systems that y’all come into contact with? If you tin can’t tell which operating system is in each of these devices, see if you can search the Net to find out.
4. For your listing in the prior question (and to the extent that you can), diagram the hardware/software “layer block” for these devices.
5. For this same listing, do you think each device’s manufacturer wrote all of the software that you use on these devices? Tin y’all add or change software to all of these devices? Why or why non? What would the implications be for cost, security, complexity, reliability, updates and upgrades, and the appeal of each device?
6. Some ATM machines utilise Windows. Why would an ATM manufacturer cull to build its systems owing Windows? Why might it want to avoid this? Are there other non-PC devices yous’ve encountered that were running some form of Windows?
7. What are embedded systems? When might firms want to install software on chips instead of on a difficult drive?
8. Information technology’s of import to sympathise how engineering impacts a firm’s strategy and competitive environment. Consider the clarification of Otis elevator’s use of embedded systems. Which parts of the value chain does this affect? How? Consider the “five forces”: How does the organisation impact the firm’s competitive environment? Are these systems a source of competitive advantage? If non, explain why non? If they are, what kinds of resources for competitive advantage can these kinds of embedded systems create?
9. Tin can you lot recall of other firms that tin can or do leverage embedded systems? Provide examples and list the kinds of benefits these might offer firms and consumers.
10. Research the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (or investigate if your nation has a similar law), and the implications of this legislation for software developers and Web site operators. Accept firms been successfully sued when their software or Web sites could not be accessed by users with physical challenges? What sorts of issues should developers consider when making their products more accessible? What practices might they avoid?

oneThe iPhone and iPod touch OS is derived from Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.

2Data for desktop, server, and mobile phones from 2009, 2008, and 2009, respectively. Desktop operating organisation data from Marketplace Share, “Operating System Marketplace Share,” 2009,
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10
mobile phone data from AdMob Mobile Metrics Written report, 2009,
http://metrics.admob.com.