The Contiki Operating System

Jack Nosek

History

Developed by Adam Dunkels of SICS

Also

developed protothreads and IP

First released on March 10, 2003

Named after Thor Heyerdahl's famous
Kon-Tiki raft
Contiki

runs on tiny and prehistoric

computers, yet is able to do much of what
we expect from large and modern
computers.

Who uses it?

Most common application is as an OS

for Networks of Embedded Systems
Hobbyists use it as an OS for older
and smaller systems
Ports

for Apple II, Atari, Gameboy, NES,

Commodore 64 and 128
Screen captures at http://
www.sics.se/~adam/contiki/ports/index.h
tml

Features

Minimalist Event Driven Kernel, even

runs on 8-bit Microcontrollers
TCP/IP Stack Support
Dynamic Loading and Unloading of
Programs
Small Memory Requirements
Optional Preemptive Multithreading
through Protothreads

Event Driven Kernel

Kernel is event based making it a

real time OS
An

event triggers the kernel to call the

corresponding event handler
Functions very similar to TinyOS
Has its drawbacks, i.e. long running
computations

TCP/IP Stack Support

Implements Dunkelss own TCP/IP

stack called IP
Memory

Requirements

Kilobytes of Program Code

Hundreds of bytes of RAM

Allows to connect to networks using

SLIP (Serial Line IP)

Dynamic Program Loading

The Core Code and Program Code

are kept separate in ROM.
Program Code loaded at runtime.
Program code can be loaded from
ROM or RAM
Allows for Over the Air
Programming for networks of
sensors

Small Memory Requirements

The base system, providing

multitasking and TCP/IP networking,
can be compiled in about 32 KB
Smallest system to date uses about
2000 bytes of RAM
Jack Ganssle praised Contiki for its low
memory usage in his Embedded Muse
newsletter, #113

Protothreads

Implemented as an additional library

on top of the event based kernel
Stackless, lightweight thread
comprised of a single C function using
2 bytes of RAM to record its state
Adds a layer of abstraction to the
state-machine event based code
usually written, to create a sequential
flow of program code.

Event-driven

Event-driven
(TinyOS)

Processes do not run

without events
Event occurs: kernel Kernel
invokes event
handler
Event handler runs
to completion
(explicit return;)

Handler

Handler

Handler

Handler

Contiki: implementing threads on top

of an event-based kernel
Event

Event
Kernel
Event

Event

Thread

Thread

Contiki Programs

Contiki Tool-kit (CTK) GUI

Virtual Network Computing (VNC) Server
A Web Server
A Web Browser
A command line shell.
A telnet server.
An IRC client.
An FTP client.
A disk directory file reader.
A file and disk image downloader utility.
A simple desktop calculator.

End

Works Cited
Slides 10 and 11 Taken from
Adam Dunkles Presentation
Contiki a Lightweight and Flexible
Operating System for Tiny
Networked Sensors
found at
http://www.sics.se/~adam/slides/contikiemnets.ppt