Our products form a comprehensive suite of embedded software and tools wrapped around the QP™ real-time frameworks — the unique reactive platform designed to provide the architectural reuse and enforcement of the best practices of concurrent programming, which leads to safer code with high conceptual integrity and dramatic improvement of software quality.
All our software is available for download from the 
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Additionally, on SourceForge you can also find: free support forum, download statistics, feature requests, bug tracking, and Git repositories.
QP™ (Quantum Platform) is a family of lightweight real-time active-object frameworks for building reactive embedded software as systems of asynchronous event-driven active objects (actors). The QP™ family consists of QP/C, QP/C++, and QP-nano frameworks, which are all strictly quality controlled, thoroughly documented, and available in full source code.
The behavior of active objects is specified in QP™ by means of hierarchical state machines (UML statecharts). The QP™ frameworks support manual coding of UML state machines in C or C++ as well as automatic code generation by means of the free QM™ modeling tool.
All QP™ frameworks can run on bare-metal single-chip microcontrollers, completely replacing a traditional RTOS. The frameworks contain a selection of built-in real-time kernels (RTOS kernels), such as the cooperative QV kernel, the preemptive non-blocking QK kernel, and the unique preemptive, dual-mode (blocking/non-blocking) QXK kernel. Native QP ports and ready-to-use examples are provided for ARM Cortex-M (M0/M0+/M3/M4F/M7) as well as other CPUs.
QP/C and QP/C++ frameworks can also work with many traditional RTOSes and desktop OSes (such as Linux and Windows).
With over 50,000 downloads a year, the QP™ framework family is the most popular such solution on the embedded software market. It provides a modern, reusable architecture of embedded applications, which combines the active-object model of concurrency with hierarchical state machines. This architecture is generally safer, more responsive and easier to understand than shared-state concurrency of a conventional Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). It also provides higher level of abstraction and the right abstractions to effectively apply modeling and code generation to deeply embedded systems, such as ARM Cortex-M-based microcontrollers.
| Feature | QP/C | QP/C++ | QP-nano |
|---|---|---|---|
| Most Recent Version (Download) / Latest Release Date (Revision History) |
6.3.6 2018-10-20 |
6.3.6 2018-10-20 |
6.3.3 2018-06-22 |
| Intended target systems / (Representative hardware) |
32-bit/16-bit MCUs (ARM Cortex-M) |
32-bit/16-bit MCUs (ARM Cortex-M) |
8-bit/16-bit MCUs (MSP430, AVRmega) |
| Programming language | C (C89) | C++ (C++98) | C (C89) |
| Code (ROM) / Data (RAM) footprint | 4KB / 1KB | 5KB / 1KB | 2KB / 0.5KB |
| Supported by the free QM modeling tool | |||
| Active Objects | |||
| Maximum number of active objects | 64 | 64 | 8 |
| Dynamic events with arbitrary parameters | 0..4 bytes | ||
| Automatic event recycling | not needed | ||
| Direct event posting (FIFO) | |||
| Direct event posting (LIFO) | |||
| Publish-Subscribe event delivery | |||
| Event deferral | |||
| Number of system clock tick rates | 0..N | 0..N | 0..3 |
| Number of time events per active object | Unlimited | Unlimited | 1 per tick rate |
| State Machines | |||
| Hierarchical State Machines (QHsm-strategy) | |||
| Hierarchical State Machines (QMsm-strategy) | |||
| Sub-machines and sub-machine states | |||
| Built-in Kernels | |||
| Cooperative kernel (QV) | |||
| Preemptive non-blocking kernel (QK) | |||
| Preemptive blocking dual-mode kernel (QXK) | |||
| 3rd-Party RTOS/OS | |||
| Portable to 3rd-party RTOS kernels | |||
| Available port to POSIX (Linux, etc.) | |||
| Available port to Windows | |||
| Testing/Profiling | |||
| QP/Spy™ software tracing | |||
| QUTest™ Unit Testing Harness | |||
| Source Code Quality | |||
| MISRA compliance | MISRA-C:2004 | MISRA-C++:2008 | MISRA-C:2004 |
| PC-Lint/FlexeLint support package | |||
| Licensing | |||
| Open Source Licensing (GPL) | |||
| Closed Source (Commercial) Licensing | |||
QM™ (QP Modeler) is a freeware, graphical modeling tool for designing and implementing real-time embedded applications based on the QP frameworks and hierarchical state machines (UML statecharts). QM™ is available for Windows, Linux and macOS.
QTools™ is a collection of various open source host-based tools for working with the QP frameworks, such as: QP/Spy™ software tracing and testing system, QWin™ GUI toolkit for prototyping embedded systems on Windows, QClean™ for cleanup of source code files, QFSGen™ for generating ROM-based file systems for embedded web servers, QCalc™ programmer's calculator, etc. The QTools collection for Windows provides also the MinGW C/C++ compiler (GNU GCC) and GNU make for Windows, as well as the related file utilities (rm, touch, etc.)
QP/Spy™ Tracing and Testing SystemQP/Spy™ is a software tracing and testing system built into the QP/C and QP/C++ real-time frameworks. QP/Spy consists of the code instrumentation inside QP/C and QP/C++ and the console application called QSPY (available for Windows, Linux and macOS hosts). The job of QP/Spy is to receive the trace data produced by an instrumented QP/C or QP/C++ application running on an embedded Target, visualize the data, and optionally to save the data in various formats (such as MATLAB or MscGen). QP/Spy can also send commands to the Target for unit testing (QUTest™) and monitoring (QSpyView™).
The QSPY host application is easily adaptable to various target-host communication links. Out of the box, the QSPY host application supports serial (RS232), TCP/IP, and file communication links. Adding other communication links is straightforward, because the data link is accessed only through a generic Platform Abstraction Layer (PAL).
QUTest™ (pronounced cutest) is a powerful Unit Testing Harness, which is specifically designed for deeply embedded systems, but also supports unit testing of embedded code on host computers ("dual targeting"). QUTest™ is the fundamental tooling for Test-Driven Development (TDD) of QP/C/C++ applications, which is a highly recommended best-practice.
QSpyView™ is a powerful visualization and monitoring facility, which allows embedded developers to rapidly create virtual Graphical User Interfaces to monitor and control their embedded devices from a host (desktop) computer. The interfaces created by QSpyView™ can visualize the tracing data produced by QP/Spy™ and can also send various commands to the embedded target.
QWin™ GUI ToolkitQWin™ is a simple GUI toolkit for prototyping (dual-targeting) embedded systems on Windows in the C programming language. QWin™ allows you to build realistic embedded front panels consisting of LCD displays (both graphical and segmented), buttons, and LEDs. QWIN is based on the raw Win32 API to provide direct mapping to C for easy integration with embedded code.
QP Development Kits (QDKs) are separate QP ports and examples for various embedded processors, toolsets, and boards.
Starting with QP release 5.4.0, all officially supported ports and examples are bundled into the QP downloads, as opposed to being distributed as separate QP Development Kits (QDKs). The QDKs released for earlier QP versions are called "legacy-QDKs" and are available for download from 
.
All "legacy QDKs" are distributed in ZIP archives named according to the following general convention:
qdkxxx_<cpu/rtos>-<toolset>-<board>_<version>.zip
qdkxxx denotes the QP framework type, whereas qdkc stands for QDK for QP/C, qdkcpp for QP/C++, and qdkn for QP-nano
<cpu> denotes a QDK for standalone QP for the given embedded CPU type, such as AVR, M16C, R8C, etc.
<rtos> denotes a QDK for QP running on top of a given RTOS, such as eCos, VxWorks, etc.
<toolset> denotes a port to specific toolset, such a IAR, GNU, Renesas, etc.
<board> denotes that the examples are for the specified boards, such as SKP3607, YRDKRX62N, etc.
<version> denotes the compatible version of the QP framework.
<version> of the QP framework. A QDK might work with the newer QP
version as well, but might require some modifications.
The installation procedure for most "legacy QDKs" is as follows:
<version> number.
<version>. For example, if your QDK file starts with qdkcpp_ and ends with _4.5.02, you should download and install QP/C++ version 4.5.02.
qdkcpp_avr-iar_4.5.02, you should copy the content of this directory inside the QP/C++ installation folder (typically, inside C:/qp/qpcpp/). Note that you will need to give your consent to overwrite the already existing directories examples/ and ports/.
Every "legacy QDK" contains the "QDK Manual" in PDF in the main directory of the ZIP archive.