The Symbian Foundation, the non-profit initiative charged with overseeing the Symbian operating system as it evolves into open source, announced the release of its platform microkernel (EKA2) and supporting SDK, adding the release is nine months ahead of schedule. According to Symbian, the real-time microkernel is the heart of the OS, comprising a fully multi-tasking architecture to manage all the resources and frameworks necessary for the system's myriad processes and applications to co-exist. The free SDK, available for download here, will include partner ARM's RVCT compiler toolchain as well as an open-source simulation environment based on QEMU, open-source base support package for the Beagle Board, supporting binaries and a hardware execution environment. The Symbian Foundation adds that 16 out of a total 134 platform packages have now been released into open source since the code was first made available on its servers in April 2009.
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For more on the Symbian microkernel release:
- read this release
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