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NSIDERS’ G
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MBEDDED RTOS: P
RODUCT I
NTERVIEWS
KADAK - RTOS PRODUCTS & SERVICES, 2009
KADAK: RTOS Products & Services, 2009
INTERVIEWEE. WILLIAM L. (BILL) RENWICK
PRESIDENT
TEL. 604-734-2796
EMAIL. amxsales@kadak.com
COMPANY. KADAK PRODUCTS LTD.
WEB. http://www.kadak.com/
Q. First of all, tell us a little bit about yourself and your responsibilities at
KADAK.
A. I am an electrical engineer by education, a software programmer by practice and a
businessman of necessity. I graduated from the University of Waterloo in Ontario,
Canada in 1967 and studied for a year in London, UK as an Athlone Fellow. Following my
return to Canada, I joined MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA on TSX) as their
first full-time employee. Over the next ten years I helped that company develop its
embedded systems expertise while it grew to about 70 employees. Today, MDA is best
known for building the Canadian Space Arm, a key part of some 60 Space Shuttle
missions. It was at MDA that I honed my software development skills for what we now
refer to as the embedded product marketplace.
In 1978, I left MDA and founded KADAK Products Ltd. to provide software engineering
services for real-time process control in the gas and oil pipeline industry across Western
Canada. Using these real-time systems as test vehicles, we developed our AMX RTOS,
one of the first multi-tasking kernels to be made commercially available for Zilog Z80 and
Intel 8080 processors. Thereafter, I represented KADAK and AMX on several of the
panels of RTOS experts sponsored by the Embedded Systems Conference during its
formative years.
Throughout KADAK's thirty-year history, I have provided hands-on technical, sales and
corporate leadership, always supported by a small group of extremely dedicated,
knowledgeable and resourceful staff members.
Q. If you would, please give us a very brief, bulleted outline of your products.
What sorts of real-time operating systems (RTOSes), tools,