We are regularly asked about the availability of SYS/BIOS and TI-RTOS on the AM335x. Below is a summary of current status and future plans. The SYS/BIOS kernel has been available on the AM335x for some time. SYS/BIOS has been tested on the AM335x EVM and IDK boards. It can be ported to any other AM335x board by creating the appropriate configuration file.
Since SYS/BIOS is just a kernel, it does NOT include any peripheral support such as device drivers or stacks. Support for these would require a TI-RTOS port. Some internal development work has been done on a TI-RTOS port for the AM335x. The intention is to use this as a basis for future versions of the Industrial SDK. However, there are no committed schedules at this time for a TI-RTOS-based Industrial SDK. The Industrial SDK can be downloaded from http://www.ti.com/tool/sysbiossdk-ind-sitara and the current release includes both the SYS/BIOS kernel and a TCP/IP stack and driver. The Industrial SDK is available for both the ICE and IDK boards.
The AM335x Starterware, downloadable from http://www.ti.com/tool/starterware-sitara, is OS-agnostic and may be used with SYS/BIOS. Developers should remember that Starterware functions are not inherently thread-safe and that appropriate SYS/BIOS locking mechanisms (such as semaphores) should be used for code that will be executed by more than one thread. In addition, SYS/BIOS interrupt management must be used throughout an application rather than the Starterware interrupt management.
For developers who are looking for a pre-ported RTOS with good middleware support, it should be stressed that AM335x is supported by a wide range of third-party RTOS solutions offering a range of price points and functionality. RTOS vendors with AM335x board support packages include Express Logic (ThreadX), Green Hills Software (Integrity), Mentor Embedded (Nucleus Ready Start), Micro Digital (SMX), QNX (Neutrino), Quadros (RTXC), Rowebots (Unison), Segger (embOS), and Wind River (VxWorks).