Learn how you can combine the best of Azure Sphere IoT security with the power of Azure RTOS to deliver new IoT solution categories. Covered in this article is a brief introduction to Azure RTOS, Azure Sphere, and the MediaTek MT3620 MCU architecture. You will also learn why you might want to run real-time applications on an Azure Sphere, how applications communicate across cores and how to get started.
Azure RTOS
Azure RTOS is a Real-Time Operating System available from Microsoft that runs on most microcontrollers. Azure RTOS includes a small powerful Real Time operating system called ThreadX, a GUI designer plus GUI library, and more. Azure RTOS ThreadX makes it easier to build reliable embedded solutions with a rich set of services including real-time, multithreading, inter-thread communication, synchronization, timers, and memory management.
Azure RTOS is free to use on an Azure Sphere MT3620 MCU and is covered by the “Distribution and Production Use” license.
Azure Sphere
The traditional approach to IoT microcontroller development is that you are responsible for integrating and maintaining all the bits of a solution. This includes the communications stack, security, authentication, certificates, identity, encryption libraries, update processes, your solution and more. Not only are you a solution domain expert, but you are now responsible for tracking new and emerging security threats, mitigating, and updating to protect IoT devices.
Azure Sphere is a unique highly secure IoT platform. You focus on your solution, Azure Sphere deals with security, identity, certificates, reporting, tracking emerging attack vectors, mitigating, updating the platform, and application distribution to protect your solutions, customers, and reputations.
Azure Sphere consists of the following components:
Together these components implement The Seven Properties of Highly Secure Devices .
Azure Sphere MediaTek MT3620 MCU architecture
The first Azure Sphere certified MCU is the MediaTek MT3620 microcontroller unit (MCU). This MCU which has three developer-accessible cores, a Cortex-A7 that runs a hardened Linux kernel, and two Cortex-M4 cores.
A system is said to be real-time if the total correctness of an operation depends not only upon its logical correctness, but also upon the time in which it is performed Link to Wikipedia Article.
A Real-Time Operating System is system software that provides services and manages processor resources for applications. These resources include processor cycles, memory, peripherals, and interrupts. The main purpose of a real-time Operating System is to allocate processing time among various duties the embedded software must perform.
The main reasons to run real-time applications on an Azure Sphere include:
Intercore communications
For security reasons, applications running on the Cortex M4 cores cannot directly access network endpoints. Applications can communicate with applications running on other cores through a secure mailbox mechanism. As an added layer of security, applications can only communicate across cores with applications they have been partnered with at development time.
Solution architecture example
This environment monitoring solution shows how you can integrate a real-time Azure RTOS application with Azure Sphere and IoT Central.
The solution architecture is as follows:
Developer Experience
You can develop Azure Sphere and Azure RTOS applications on Linux and Windows. On Windows, you can develop high-level and real-time applications with Visual Studio (free Community Edition or better), Visual Studio Code, or integrate with your existing toolchains. On Linux you can develop high-level and real-time applications with Visual Studio Code or integrate with your existing toolchains.
Next Steps
There are two Microsoft Learn modules which include hands-on labs you can download to start your Azure Sphere and Azure RTOS journey.
Skip to unit 16 to learn more about real-time Azure RTOS running on an Azure Sphere.
You must be a registered user to add a comment. If you've already registered, sign in. Otherwise, register and sign in.