The Free Multi Tasking Portable Operating System Contiki is an open source operating system developed for use on a number of memory-constrained networked systems ranging from the 8-bit computers to the embedded systems on microcontrollers and various devices.

Although the Free Portable OS is capable of providing multitasking facilities and a built-in TCP/IP stack, Contiki only needs a few kilobytes of code and just a few hundred bytes of RAM to work perfect! A full system, complete with a graphical user interface, needs only about 30 kilobytes of RAM.

A full installation of the Free Contiki OS includes features such as a multitasking kernel, optional per-application pre-emptive multithreading, protothreads, TCP/IP networking functions, includes IPv6 windowing system, a networked remote display using virtual network computing, a basic web browser (claimed to be the world’s smallest), a personal web server, a simple telnet client, a screensaver and most importantly a GUI.

A key feature about the Free Portable OS Contiki is that, it can be run on a variety of platforms ranging from embedded microcontrollers such as the TI-MSP430 and the Atmel AVR, on the old home computers, to running Contiki OS on Parallels Windows Apple Mac Computers. Its code footprint is in the order of kilobytes and the memory usage can be configured to be as low as tens of bytes.  A typical Contiki configuration generally consume about 2 kilobytes of RAM and 40 kilobytes of ROM! Now isn’t that amazing?

This Free Portable Contiki Multitasking Operating System consists of an event-driven kernel on top of which application programs are dynamically loaded and unloaded at runtime. Contiki processes use light-weight protothreads that provide a linear, thread-like programming style on top of the event-driven kernel.

The Free Portable Multi Tasking Operating System Contiki was made with the embedded systems in mind and today it can be said to be one of the most capable in the open source community. The others in its categories are the BeRT OS and the Symb OS and both offer limited capabilities compared to this one. Thus, if you are one of those embedded systems programmer, or just a software freak then I suggest you to definitely try out the software once for yourself!

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