MicroEmpix v2.0 is here!

"The number of the processes shall be five. No more, no less. Thou shall only create 4 processes in order to proceed to create a fifth. Six or more processes is right out."

-- From the Holy Handbook of MicroEmpix

What Happens when a man just has too much?

There is a picture of a MicroEmpix developer, hard at trying to understand the concept of FUBAR programming techniques, with his head digged in between a monitor and a PC, his forehead touching hard against many cables. This position is a standard Shaolin inner spirit awareness technique, involving the embracement of the Tao of Programming. These hard-working MicroEmpix users and developers strive to achieve unification with the Tao of MicroEmpix. They work night and day to fulfill the wishes and fantasies of the Master Programmer, overcoming and bypassing all obstacles, however insignificant or major. They exist only to serve. Long live MicroEmpix, long live the Tao.

 

What is MicroEmpix, really?

MicroEmpix is the microkernel version of Empix, the True ™ Operating System of the Tao. MicroEmpix was developed with the balance and harmony of the inner self in mind: To achieve wonders, but with humility. To occupy our minds and souls, but not our hard drives and memory. To make use of the CPU, but sparingly, and with mercy. To create processes, but only the way of the Tao - in unison with itself and them.

MicroEmpix preserves the originality and innovation of its father. Only this time it has no shell. Its naked self is projected onto hardware, and onto software, and onto thy screens and thy embedded systems. It laughs at those who wish for a filesystem. For what is a filesystem, but a trap for the unwanted data? It discards all of the precarious concepts that have plagued Operating Systems for countless aeons. It has seen the future, it has seen the neverending streams of data flow through its structures and buffers and queues. It has seen processes become one with the kernel, to celebrate the greatest mystery of them all: The reschedule() function.

So, it's a microkernel. So what?

Ah, the constant struggle of youth with the powers of the Earth and Universe.. You are quick to anger, quick to disbelief, yet slow to acceptance, slow to see the truth. Your eyes are veiled by the marketing departments of the great Houses that seek only greed. Redmond is a nest of lies and deceipt, the young ones at the Cult of the Steppe (the ones that call themselves GNU), have lost the way of the Tao, and are misled by dreams of grandeur. Only MicroEmpix leads the true, humble way of microkernels. It is wholesome, yet not consuming. It is weird, yet not strange. It has no meaning, yet everything revolves around it. It is One with the Tao.

"Every cloud has a silver lining"

It does. Even if your compiler mistakes a dx variable declared as float32 as the dx register, even if your embedded system doesn't support float emulation in software, even if your programs behave erratically, even if the number of processes shall be 5, no more.

There is a silver lining. It might be seen under the heap of rubble that was previously your machinery. It might be seen in the lazy flow of data between your embedded system and the application.

Ah, the beauty of the baud. The mystical ways of the serial port. The endless interchange of electrical pulses that signify the bits, the data, the information. From char, to int, to long, to float32 and back again. Such is the wisdom of the software float emulation library. It might be troublesome, or even slow, but, ah, what infinite accuracy. What great computational ways make themselves appear. And all, within the Tao. With interrupts the RS232 is made a heaven, with emulated floats every calculation is whole. And all the processes running, calculating, reading, sending. Each in its own way unique.

The response is too slow? Merely a discomfort. The data seems all wrong? Simply a matter of relative coordinates. Can you trust the simulation? No. Can you trust your eyes? No. Can you trust your PC, or your program, or your skills? No.

But you can trust MicroEmpix.