FreeRTOS replacing ThreadX as the main kernel - May 2025 STM32 Summit

[NRedd.2]

Hi,

On the keynote speech, I saw that FreeRTOS will be the main kernel.

• Does that mean that ThreadX will not be offered as an alternative?
• What is the reason for this change?
• What about NetXDuo as a middleware?

I am quite happy with how ThreadX and its components worked with each other. Over the years, I have developed several products with NetXDuo, USBX middlewares with ThreadX as an operating system. Not sure why ST is stepping back to FreeRTOS. Curious to know.

Best regards,

Navin

[Pavel A.]

What circumstances? Once Microsoft has adopted ThreadX, they provided skilled resources to port network and USB components to STM32. It was significant and costly effort, resulted in (almost) production quality. Then the love story ended (here I agree, for technical and economical reasons). Amazon still stands behind FreeRTOS, and the community seems to like it because of simplicity - compared to alternatives. So I guess the yield for the money is better for Amazon. Anyway there should be professional support behind complex low-level drivers (ETH, USB, CAN...) on the same level as Microsoft AzureRTOS devs did it.  It should be understandable that ST won't develop our products for us and won't provide production grade RTOS for free. What they offer is good for demos, tests and quick prototypes to drive sales of their chips. FreeRTOS is fine for this.

[Ozone]

Just a hunch, of course I might be wrong. I was thinking of tariffs and possible future licence issues.

To be honest, I am only somewhat involved in the maintainance of FreeRTOS based application, not much development in this regard in my company. Those applications involve SIL-2 certifications, OS changes / updates are avoided whenever possible. So I didn't really follow developments in this field.
And for my hobby projects I either go bare-metal, or use Linux.

[NRedd.2]

@Pavel A. 

Of course, we cannot expect ST to develop products for us!

What I do not understand is, why they are moving away from ThreadX even when it is open-source just like FreeRTOS. And many of their products already have integration examples with USBX, NetxDuo and FileX. 

[Andrew Neil]

and when they only (relatively) recently switched away from FreeRTOS !

What have they learned about ThreadX that warrants doing such a U-turn ... ?

[Tesla DeLorean]

Microsoft has no staying power with any of their initiatives that don't immediately succeed.

They lost me in the Media Player / Plays for Sure era. They gave up on WinCE, PMC, Zune, Phone.

The SYNC system in my last two FORDs has not been compelling.

Laying off 3% of their staff this week.

Surely ST has enough staff to support their own efforts, and maintain a couple of OS. Isn't the point of the code generation to reduce the effort and leverage the machine? ST should work on creating solid driver code and examples. Thoroughly testing functionality, and be OS agnostic.

Not sure ST's choices should impact other's independent development choices. Tying your fortune to fickle third-parties is rarely successful, they have divergent priorities, and goals.