FreeRTOS Partnership
Royalty-Free, Top-in-Class RTOS for Embedded Systems
Future Designs, Inc. has built FreeRTOS into the foundation of its embedded software strategy for years, integrating it as the core RTOS beneath the μEZ® and SuRG software platforms. FreeRTOS is the market-leading real-time operating system for microcontrollers, supporting more than 40 processor architectures with a small memory footprint, fast execution, and a mature, well-documented API that has been open source under the MIT license for over 20 years.
Tiny Footprint — Fitting Embedded Constraints
FreeRTOS is designed to be small and portable, with a typical footprint in the range of a few kilobytes of ROM depending on architecture and configuration. This lets FDI target cost-sensitive, resource-constrained microcontrollers without sacrificing multitasking capability.
Preemptive, Priority-Based Scheduling — Deterministic Firmware
FreeRTOS’s scheduler supports preemptive, cooperative, and time-sliced scheduling policies with priority-based task management. FDI’s engineers rely on this deterministic behavior when building responsive touchscreen GUIs and control systems where predictable timing matters — from button response to sensor polling to display refresh.
Broad Architecture Support — One Codebase, Many Targets
FreeRTOS runs on more than 40 processor architectures and 15+ toolchains, including ARM Cortex-M, Cortex-A, and RISC-V. This breadth lets FDI reuse application code across projects even as customers move between NXP, ST, and other microcontroller families, reducing rework and speeding time to market.
Products Built on FreeRTOS
μEZ GUI – Standalone LCD GUI Family
FDI’s μEZ GUI product family is a line of off-the-shelf, standalone touchscreen GUI and HMI production modules built on NXP microcontrollers, including the LPC1788, LPC4088, and LPC4357. Each module runs the proven μEZ® / FreeRTOS software platform and is available as both development-kit (with JTAG debugger, power supply, and full documentation) and production-modules for volume deployment.
A μEZ GUI can serve as the main controller in an application or as a slave GUI to add a display to an existing NXP-based design. Display sizes range from 3.5″ to 7.0″, in resistive and capacitive touch options, with a minimum 10-year production guarantee.
SuRG – Sunlight-Readable GUI Family
SuRG is FDI’s family of low-power, sunlight-readable GUI LCD modules, built on the FreeRTOS platform, and optimized for the STMU585 microcontroller. Supporting various power modes, SuRG is ideal for applications where low-power consumption is critical. Whether you need a primary controller or a simple GUI display, SuRG is the uncontested choice where battery life matters.
These are 10-year channel life, standard products stocked through DigiKey, Mouser, Avnet, and WPGA, with quick customization available for specific applications.