Green Hills Gets Cozy With Xilinx

Green Hills Software announced today the availability of its entire DSO product line for Xilinx Virtex-4 Platform FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) for software-defined radio.

The Green Hills products include the Integrity RTOS, PowerPC compilers, TimeMachine debugger, Multi IDE, Green Hills probe, and SuperTrace probe.

Xilinx and Green Hills have collaborated to develop an integrated hardware and software solution for software defined radio. This solution integrates the Green Hills Software Platform for Software Defined Radio, including the tools and embedded software required to develop and deploy Software Communications Architecture (SCA)-compliant SDR systems, with the Virtex-II or Virtex-4 FPGAs.

The move lets Virtex-4 system developers create integrated solutions for networking, medical, automotive, avionics, defense and industrial control devices.

More info from Green Hills here.

Posted at 11:51 AM | Comments

Drive, She Said

This week Ford announced it would lay off 30,000 workers and close 14 plants, and GM reported an annual loss of $8.6 billion, its worst financial results since 1992. So a DSO.com story on the auto industry, posted earlier this week, turns out to be even timelier than we had expected it to be.

Our story, The Auto Industry Hits Reset, by contributor Nicole Lewis, explores how automakers are upgrading their relationships with device software and hardware suppliers as their vehicles become rolling infotainment centers.

Last month Nicole gave us an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at Toyota's recall of 75,000 Prius hybrid cars after a software glitch caused some cars to stall and shut down. According to Nicole's report, Behind Toyota's Software Recall, the problems at Toyota are not the Japanese carmaker's alone, but have serious implications for the entire industry.

Posted at 09:03 AM | Comments

DSO Vendor Nominated for Company of the Year Award

DSO vendor Wind River was nominated for two Annual Creativity in Electronics (ACE) awards by EE Times.

The ACE awards, which will be presented on April 4 at the Embedded Systems Conference, recognize the industry's most innovative companies and breakthrough technologies.

Wind River (a major sponsor of DSO.com) was nominated for two awards: Company of the Year (under $1 billion sales category), and Executive of the Year.

The Company of the Year award will be presented to the small- or medium-sized company that exhibits the highest degree of professionalism in staff development and retention, customer focus, technical excellence and profitable growth -- a true leader in the electronics sector. The Exec of the Year award will go to the individual who brought leadership, technological and fiscal vision to a company, organization or company division during 2005.

Trolltech, supplier of the Qtopia Linux application platform for mobile devices, was also nominated for the Company of the Year (under $1 billion sales) award.

For a complete list of the ACE nominees, see this press release.

Posted at 02:50 PM | Comments

Fewer Roll Their Own...Operating Systems

I'm old enough to remember when "roll your own" referred to cigarettes, both legal and not. So perhaps I shouldn't be surprised to learn that when it comes to real-time operating systems, "roll your own" is rolling away.

Turns out that only about 37% of developers recently surveyed say they use non-commercial operating systems as part of their development efforts, and that's down from 43% who said the same thing in 2001, according to a new report from Venture Development Corp. What's more, the percentage of developers who use proprietary operating systems will continue to decline, VDC predicts.

The reason for the decline is pretty simple: New demands—including networking, increasingly complex software, and advancing hardware—all require the use of a commercial OS.

That's good news for Wind River, Green Hills, and other RTOS vendors, but not so good for your local OS jockey. Still, for those seeking a middle way, there's always Linux. VDC cites the open-source OS for its low costs, free availability of source code, ability to customize, and support of a global open-source community. And increasingly, you can now get Linux from the mainstream vendors, too.

For more, grab a summary of the VDC report here: Proprietary Operating Systems – Capturing the "Roll Your Own" Market.

In case you were wondering: I didn't inhale, either.

Posted at 02:46 PM | Comments

BAE Adds Integrity

Green Hills Software today announced that it has ported its Integrity RTOS to BAE Systems' RAD750, a radiation-hardened version of IBM's PowerPC 750. The RAD750 comes in both processor-only and single-board computer versions. Before today, it was available only without an OS (meaning developers used their own homegrown system) or with Wind River's VxWorks.

The first announced customer for the BAE/Green Hills package is satellite maker Loral. In a prepared statement, Dave Stofko, flight systems software manager at Loral, said the product "represents the state of the art in space-based device software platforms."

In a phone briefing today, Dave Mender, director of business development at Green Hills and the company's main contact for BAE, told me that Integrity's MMU (memory management unit) features are especially handy in space, where random solar radiation can actually flip bits, a little problem known as a Single Event Upset, or SEU. Integrity's MMU features means developers segment components, so if a SEU does occur, it takes down only one component rather than the entire system. Also, developers can program the system to monitor components, then reload and restart any component that fails. For example, Mender says, a system could be programmed to receive a reading from a single component every 60 seconds; then, if more than a minute passed between readings, the system would "assume" that the component had failed, and automatically reload and restart it.

Posted at 03:35 PM | Comments

VxWorks in Space

NASA's Stardust mission return capsule is scheduled to land this Sunday a little after 3:00 in the morning local time at the Utah Test and Training Range, completing a 2.88-billion-mile round trip to capture and bring back to Earth for the first time comet and interstellar dust particles. Behind the scenes is Wind River's VxWorks RTOS.

VxWorks was been responsible for Stardust's flight trajectory and path, the collection of interstellar dust and comet material, the journey back to Earth, and the safe landing of the return capsule. Wind River worked with on the project with the Jet Propulsion Lab, which managed the overall project for NASA.

NASA says Stardust's comet dust and interstellar dust samples could help answer fundamental questions about the origin of solar systems, planets and life: How and when did the elements that led to life enter the solar system? How were these materials transformed by heat, ultraviolet light, and other forces? How were they distributed among planetary bodies, and in what molecular and mineral-based forms? Apparently, the comets know.

Other Stardust contractors include Boeing, which designed and built the Delta rocket that blasted Stardust into space, and Lockheed Martin, which built the Stardust spacecraft and Sample-Return Capsule. Fun fact: Stardust also used a cool, JPL-developed foam, called Aerogel, to gently collect space particles without damaging them. A cubic inch of Aerogel weighs only 0.00011 pound (or 3 milligrams per cubic centimeter for you metric fans), leading Guiness World Records to name the stuff the world's lowest-density solid in 2002.

NASA posted a detailed, 38-page backgrounder on the project back in 1999, the year Stardust launched; you can view it here: Stardust Launch Press Kit. And for more on Wind River's role in the Stardust mission, you might start with this Wind River press release.

Posted at 03:11 PM | Comments

Klocwork, Wind River Announce Development Partnership

Klocwork and Wind River Systems announced a partnership today that will let joint customers use Klocwork's static analysis solutions within their Wind River Workbench environments.

As part of the partnership, Klocwork has integrated its K7 product suite with Workbench, the Eclipse-based open device software development solution. K7, announced last June, is a fully integrated software-security and software-quality solution that aims to help development teams find and fix potential software problems early in the development lifecycle.

"It is only natural that we want to offer our mutual customers the best end-to-end integrated solution for developing high-quality products," said Mike Laginski, CEO of Klocwork, in a prepared statement.

For more, view the press release: Klocwork's Leading Static Analysis Solutions Now Integrated with Wind River's Workbench IDE.

BTW, Klockwork's CTO, Djeanna Campara, recently wrote an Industry View column for DSO.com, which you can view here: Better, Newer, Now.

Posted at 03:55 PM | Comments

EclipseCon is Coming

EclipseCon, the technical and user conference focusing on the Eclipse platform, is coming to the Santa Clara, Calif., Convention Center on March 20-23. At least two sessions should be of interest to DSO developers and managers.

Doug Gaff, an engineering manager at DSO vendor Wind River, will give a talk on March 22 entitled "DSDP: Technology, roadmap, and getting involved." DSDP, in case you don't know, is the Device Software Development Project, an Eclipse project focused on building an extensible, standards-based platform to address a broad range of needs in the embedded software development space. (If I do say so myself, DSO.com posted a good overview of the DSDP project last June, which you can view here: Eclipse Embraces Open Source Software Development Momentum.) For more information on Doug Gaff's presentation, see this EclipseCon page.

A related presentation, "Using and Extending the DSDP Target Management Framework," will be given on March 22 by Martin Oberhuber, a software developer and architect at Wind River, and David Dykstal, a 28-year veteran of IBM. For more details, see this EclipseCon page.

Keynoters at this year's EclipseCon are to include Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software, Greg Stein of Apache Software Foundation, and Tod Nielsen of Borland. For more information on the conference, you could do worse than starting with the EclipseCon 2006 home page.

Posted at 02:30 PM | Comments

Wind River Enhances Aero/Defense Offerings

DSO vendor Wind River made three aerospace/defense-related announcements today in connection with its west coast regional developers conference in Manhattan Beach, Calif.

* The new Software Defined Radio Platform lets developers build Software Communications Architecture (SCA) compliant software-defined radios with VxWorks 6.2 for use in Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS) and other implementations.

* VxWorks 653 v2.1 is Wind River's enhanced ARINC 653 IMA platform for safety-critical systems. Promised benefits to device designers include shorter development times, lower intial certification costs, and lower cost of change and re-certification.

* A new MILS (Multiple Independent Levels of Security) platform: VxWorks SRTOS (secure RTOS) provides an enviroment for rapid deployment of co-resident secure and nonsecure applications on a single MMU (multiple memory unit)-partioned CPU.

BTW, I'm told the west coast conference was a hit. "One hundred people signed up, and one hundred people showed up," said Chip Downing, Wind River's new A&D industry marketing manager. "It's packed."

Chip also reminded me that Wind's A&D business represents about 25% of the company's business and involves more than 900 customers. I guess the company could be said to have a military-industrial complex. But seriously, you can learn more about Wind's A&E business on its Aerospace & Defense page.

JANUARY 12 UPDATE: We just posted additional coverage of Wind River's announcement by our colleagues at sister site EE Times. You can read that story here: Wind River Touts Platforms for Specialty Applications.

Posted at 01:55 PM | Comments

Enea Moves to the Valley

Swedish device-software vendor Enea has moved its North American HQ from Phoenix, Ariz., to San Jose, Calif., in the heart of Silicon Valley. "It only makes sense to relocate our North American headquarters to the capital of the high-tech world," said Virginia Walker, president of Enea's North American operations, in a prepared statement.

Enea's San Jose office will provide marketing, sales, technical support and professional services. The company's products include OSE, a family of RTOSes; Polyhedra, a device database; and Element, a middleware solution.

Want more? Here's the official press release as it appeared on BusinessWire: Enea Establishes North American Headquarters in Silicon Valley.

Posted at 12:59 PM | Comments

Exec Shakeups at MontaVista

Jim Ready, founder of embedded Linux specialist MontaVista Software, will reportedly step down as CEO to become the company's top technologist. And two other company execs have resigned.

Well, that would explain why Ready turned us down last month for an interview. The DSO.com editorial team had hoped to do an in-depth profile of this important RTOS vendor. But no CEO, no story.

Two other execs have reportedly quit: Hitoshi Arima, GM of MontaVista's Japan office, and Kelly Herrell, senior VP of operations.

A tip of the hat to LinuxDevices.com, which seems to have been the first with this story: MontaVista starts new year with changes at the top.

Posted at 12:21 PM | Comments

VDC's Got a Brand New Blog

Everybody's blogging. The latest to join the fray is industry analyst Chris Lanfear of Venture Development Corp. Welcome to the blogosphere, Chris!

In his new blog, Chris discusses topics that include mobile Java OS company Savaje's luck with the venture community, Mapusoft's updated list of supported OSes, and recent announcements from embedded-software vendor Accelerated Technology. He even expounds on what he calls "the battle for the soul of DSO."

I disagree with Chris on the future of DSO when he predicts that vendors will "get tired of the whole thing and leave DSO to Wind River." Au contraire, IMHO. Nonetheless, his new blog goes directly into my RSS feed, along with Wind River CMO John Bruggeman's blog, the often outrageous Being John Bruggeman.

To see what Chris is up to, check out his blog, On Target: Embedded Systems.

Posted at 10:50 AM | Comments

Ringing In The New

Happy New Year's to everyone in the DSO community! Here's hoping 2006 will be a good year for business, and a good year for peace. So far this year, we have a Wind River regional developers conference to look forward to, and some news from Microsoft:

DSO vendor Wind River will host its Southern California 2006 Regional Developer Conference on Wednesday, January 11. At the event, Wind River will announce significant new enhancements to its aerospace & defense solutions. Steve LaPedis, Wind's VP of field marketing, will make a presentation, as will a TBD representative from Freescale. Presentation topics are to include VxWorks, extending Workbench, and making commercial-grade Linux a reality. Learn more and register: Wind River 2006 Developer Conferences page.

Microsoft has moved its WinXP Embedded team back into the Mobile Embedded Division. The group had been in the Windows Core OS division. Welcome back, guys. To learn more, view this blog entry from XPe team member Andy.

In more Microsoft news, the organizers of Microsoft Mobile and Embedded DevCon 2006 have put out a call for proposals from potential breakout-session speakers. "Successful proposals will be technical presentations that target best practices and tips & tricks, delivered by experts with significant and highly-rated speaking experience," they say. Learn more and register: MEDC 2006 Call for Papers page.

Posted at 03:03 PM | Comments