I NSIDERS’ G UIDE E 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, and/or services does your company offer? A. AMX® Real-time Multitasking Kernel is a "hard real-time" RTOS for mission critical use. The KwikNet® TCP/IP Stack adds network protocols for embedded product usage. I NSIDERS’ G UIDE E MBEDDED RTOS: P RODUCT I NTERVIEWS All products are delivered with a Configuration Builder, which helps developers customize the AMX RTOS and KwikNet TCP/IP Stack for their particular application. The KwikLook™ debug tool provided with the AMX RTOS adds task-awareness to the software debuggers used to test real-time applications. Q. What is KADAK’s “unique value proposition” for the embedded systems engineer or programmer who is considering an embedded RTOS? What do you and your products do to help him get his product to market faster, cheaper, better? A. The strength of KADAK's software products lies in the quality of the product implementation and the 30 years over which the products have been tried and tested. Each of KADAK's software products is shipped with a sample program that illustrates the operation of the product on one or more boards with which the product has been exercised. These samples often serve as a template for the initial development of the customer's end product. The supporting development tools and documentation leave little room for error by the system designers and programmers. New users find it easy to use our products and focus on their applications. Previous users buy again because of the reliability that they know and trust. KADAK has always been known as the company that responds, whether to a request for pricing or for technical support. Q. How are you different as a company from competitors? What sets your products apart from those of other RTOS companies? A. KADAK is a responsive corporation. There are not long delays while the developer tries to find just the right person to handle the query, be it for sales or technical support. We even receive top marks for our expert assistance following those eleventh hour calls of anguish when we are asked to explain that elusive "last bug" in the application, even though KADAK software is not even suspected as a possible cause. Our documentation is renowned for its quality. Few questions are asked today that have not been answered in the extensive reference manuals. Our documentation and the robust nature of our software go a long way to explaining why so few support calls are received by KADAK's technical staff. KADAK's AMX RTOS is known as a robust, responsive, real-time kernel well suited for mission critical use. It has been used in products that have received FAA flight certification and in medical instruments for open-heart surgery. AMX powered the initial success of the Palm Pilot and BlackBerry revolution. Today it is found in cell phones of all stripes that incorporate the MediaTek (formerly Analog Devices Wireless) chipset. Q. What embedded architectures do you support - e.g., Intel architecture, MIPS, ARM, PowerPC, etc.? I NSIDERS’ G UIDE E MBEDDED RTOS: P RODUCT I NTERVIEWS A. Today, we are most frequently asked to provide our solutions for ARM, PowerPC and ColdFire. However, we still offer legacy solutions for Intel 80x86 (real and protected mode), 68000 and MIPS. Q. What additional software do you offer such as networking, file systems, TCP/IP, security, IDE, GUIs etc.? What about development tools? Are there particular partnerships with other software companies that are especially helpful? A. In addition to KADAK's AMX RTOS, we offer the KwikNet TCP/IP Stack for those requiring network features. KwikNet is supported by an extensive set of optional network protocols, which permit the developer to select only those components required for a specific project. KADAK does not provide software development tools (assembler, C/C++ compiler, librarian, linker, locator, debugger). Instead, KADAK provides out of the box support for popular tools for each particular processor family from well-known vendors such as ARM Ltd., FreeScale and IAR. Legacy products still include support for tools from vendors such as MetaWare, Mentor Graphics, Diab-Data (Wind River) and Microsoft. KADAK enjoys good third party working relationships with vendors that offer software products complimentary to KADAK's AMX RTOS and KwikNet TCP/IP Stack. Embedded file systems are available from EBS Inc. and HCC-Embedded. For products requiring a custom GUI interface, KADAK recommends the PEG family of graphics solutions from Swell Software. Q. How are your products sold? What is a typical fee arrangement? Is it royalty free? Per unit royalty? A. KADAK's software products are licensed for the development of a single end product. A one-time license fee for each developed product is required for distribution of up to 100,000 units of the end product. The license fee increases in steps for higher quantities. No per-product royalties are charged. There are no per-seat costs. Hence, one license covers the many designers, engineers and programmers who may be working on the end product development at a particular site. The license fee includes full source code for each licensed KADAK software part, together with 90-days of technical support Q. Finally, what sort of “try before buy” experiences does your company offer? Are there free demo downloads, webinars, seminars? What web URL’s can you point us to for more information? A. KADAK does not offer free trial versions of its software. All products are shipped with complete source code and with no time-limited locks. To assist potential buyers, KADAK provides a wealth of information on its website at http://www.kadak.com/. I NSIDERS’ G UIDE E MBEDDED RTOS: P RODUCT I NTERVIEWS In particular, for technical reference manuals, go to http://www.kadak.com/html/kdkp1510.htm. for supported processors and boards, go to http://www.kadak.com/html/kdkp1210.htm for timing information, go to http://www.kadak.com/html/kdkp1230.htm for memory footprint sizes , go to http://www.kadak.com/html/kdkp1222.htm Q. Thank you for this product interview.