First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, deterministic performance and in many cases, safety and security certification for industries such as aerospace, defense, medical devices, industrial equipment, robotics, energy, transportation, network infrastructure, automotive, and consumer electronics.

[5] VxWorks comes with the kernel, middleware, board support packages, Wind River Workbench development suite, complementary third-party software and hardware.

In its latest release, VxWorks 7, the RTOS has been re-engineered for modularity and upgradeability so the OS kernel is separate from middleware, applications, and other packages.

[7][8][9] VxWorks started in the late 1980s as a set of enhancements to a simple RTOS called VRTX[10] sold by Ready Systems (becoming a Mentor Graphics product in 1995).

[11] Wind River acquired rights to distribute VRTX and significantly enhanced it by adding, among other things, a file system and an integrated development environment.

In 1987, anticipating the termination of its reseller contract by Ready Systems, Wind River proceeded to develop its own kernel to replace VRTX within VxWorks.

The OS kernel is separate from middleware, applications, and other packages,[8] which enables easier bug fixes and testing of new features.

[25] The Eclipse-based Workbench IDE that comes with VxWorks is used to configure, analyze, optimize, and debug a VxWorks-based system under development.

VxWorks 7 uses Wind River Workbench 4[30] which updates to the Eclipse 4 base provides full third party plug-in support and usability improvements.

[34] Aircraft As of July 2019, a paper published by Armis[114] exposed 11 critical vulnerabilities, including remote code execution, denial of service, information leaks, and logical flaws impacting more than two billion devices using the VxWorks RTOS.