Hi all,

I'm doing research on the embedded systems market. I was wondering why it is important that Rhapsody is independant of an RTOS. Do most developers design on multiple OSs? I would imagine that at least 1/3 of Rhapsody developers would design on VxWorks...

What do you think?

The advantage is not in being able to port between platforms. The advantage is being able to focus on the user requirements more than the details of the platform. I've been able to build prototype executable requirement models in real time in front of the customer. I could never do that so quickly if I had to learn an OS object model.

I haven't ported any of my projects to other platforms. They usually just stay on the platform they were designed for. But, I've had to learn new platforms on short order. Being platform independent allows you to quickly start working on a project for a new platform without a steep training period.

"I would imagine that at least 1/3 of Rhapsody developers would design on VxWorks"

I don't believe that is true. Even if it were, you still want to have portability built into your model to allow you to do a significant portion of testing on your development PC, typically running windows.

BTW, from my own experience VxWorks is perhaps the least appropriate RTOS to use due to cost, licensing model and a general lack of efficiency in their tools (compilation times etc). There are plenty of better RTOS solutions available depending on your requirement. VxWorks is being phased out in my company.