Deep inside a nuclear reactor in Qinchan, China, may lie the building blocks to the future of the BlackBerry and the key to Research In Motion Ltd.’s salvation.

Mixed in among the various dials, gauges and levers that evoke images of Cold War-era nuclear plants at this Canadian-designed facility are a series of plant display systems; high-tech computer screens that use sophisticated software to keep a watchful eye on the site’s CANDU (Canada Deuterium Uranium) reactor.

Almost everything about the state of the plant is displayed there, from tank pressure levels to alarm indications. Of course, this technology is not unique to Qinchan. Many of the power plants designed and built by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. employ this technology.

Underneath everything is software developed by QNX Software Systems, the Ottawa area company acquired by RIM this year, and the same company that built the underlying technology powering RIM’s iPad alternative, the PlayBook.

To some observers, RIM’s very success in the still nascent, but soon to be very crowded, market for mobile tablet devices hinges on the BlackBerry Tablet OS, which is built on QNX’s Neutrino software and may also be used one day to power the company’s BlackBerry devices.

Similar to how Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system allows a user to access everything from Internet browsers to video games, QNX’s Neutrino software acts as the conduit relaying information from technology hardware to the actual software being accessed by the user.

According to Dave Trask, a senior section head in AECL’s systems engineering technology branch, one of the major advantages of QNX’s technology is that its real time nature allows engineers to prioritize the activities of the system.

“If I have a mission-critical task, and a task that’s not so mission-critical on the same computer, my mission-critical task is always going to get to run when it’s supposed to run and it’s never going to get bogged down on one [operation] that’s not so important,” he said.

As well, Mr. Trask said QNX’s technology contains a “memory management until” that allows applications and services to run in their own protected space, which means that none of the programs on a given computer will interfere with one another.

It is this sort of technology which enables what RIM is calling “true multitasking.” Different varieties of QNX’s Neutrino technology allow individual processors to handle separate tasks.

“We’ve designed from day one to maximize, you throw a second core in, things will get faster,” QNX co-founder Dan Dodge told Reuters earlier this week. “You throw a third core, faster again. It’s built into the architecture.”

All of which makes this year’s purchase of QNX, RIM’s most important acquisition ever, according to Kevin Restivo, a mobile technology analyst with the market research firm IDC.

“That’s not just because it’s powering a brand new, forthcoming product, the PlayBook,” he said. “But it’s also because we’re likely to see it in more of RIM’s smartphones going forward. It will also be the linchpin of RIM’s bid to attract and retain developers, which has been a sore point for the company.”

In computer science circles, QNX has a stellar reputation and is often praised for its uptime, scalability and the efficiency of its code.

QNX’s Neutrino software already provides the real time technology necessary to run the in-car computer systems inside automobiles produced by Acura, Audi and BMW. It runs inside the routers developed by Cisco Systems Inc. that help form the backbone of the Internet.

The same technology is also used in everything from hospital bed monitoring systems to package scanners employed by the U.S. Postal Service.

In fact, Mr. Trask says AECL is in the process of certifying its QNX-powered displays so that they can completely replace the knobs, dials and levers still used for safety monitoring in nuclear plants across Canada.

“The future control room is a glass control room, where you’re getting rid of all that analog instrumentation and replacing it with this technology,” Mr. Trask said.

mhartley@nationalpost.com