Wind River Partners with Oxford Semiconductor for Device Networking Solutions

February 13, 2007 – Wind River, the global leader in Device Software Optimisation (DSO), today announced that Oxford Semiconductor, a leading provider of high-performance connectivity solutions, has joined Wind River's Partner Alliance programme and will bundle evaluation copies of Wind River Platform for Consumer Devices, Linux Edition, the company's Carrier-Grade Linux device software platform, with Oxford's first network connectivity controller.

Creating a completely integrated connectivity platform for device networking products, the Wind River enabled OXETHU954 incorporates an embedded ARM9 processor and provides Ethernet, PCI, USB2.0 and UART connectivity in a single package.

Greatly simplifying the design of device networking products in factory automation, point-of-sale and building management applications, the chip's comprehensive software development kit will also carry an evaluation copy of Wind River® Workbench, a comprehensive set of Eclipse-based development tools. Wind River's Workbench tools will help device manufacturers focus on building differentiated device applications, understand and test complex projects and accelerate time-to-market by leveraging the deeply instrumented middleware technology in both VxWorks and Wind River Linux platforms.

Workbench 2.6 delivers device software tools in a standards-based Eclipse development environment that ensures higher-quality products, improved kernel and middleware insight, and higher productivity. Optimised for device software development across the entire product lifecycle, the latest version of Workbench offers knowledge-sharing facilities and a unique set of diagnostic tools to rapidly test and repair running systems.

"Oxford Semiconductor has a worldwide reputation for creating innovative high performance connectivity solutions and it's a pleasure to have the company as a partner," said Glenn Seiler, senior manager for Linux Platforms at Wind River. "We share a common philosophy in providing designers with a complete development environment that helps bring-up hardware quickly and reduces time-to-market.

"In developing our first network connectivity controller, the stability and reliability of the operating system was a key design criteria and Wind River Linux provided the best solution by far," said Adrian Braine, Oxford Semiconductor's Marketing Manager of Connectivity Solutions. "As a Wind River Partner, we are excited about the prospect of working together in the future to further enhance the customer design-in experience."

Workbench 2.6

• Implementation onto existing Eclipse installation as a plug-in: To support users who already develop with Eclipse, Workbench can be installed as a set of plug-ins to an existing Eclipse 3.2 installation. As a result, users may now preserve projects and configurations in an existing Eclipse implementation when adopting Workbench.
• Compatibility with Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools (CDT): Workbench is compatible with CDT, allowing users to have both CDT projects and Workbench projects in the same Eclipse shell. This allows Workbench to co-exist with other vendors' Eclipse-based products that may require CDT, significantly improving interoperability across the desktop.
• Java development support: The Java Development Toolkit (JDT) is included in Workbench to facilitate device-focused Java development. Support for multi-language systems has also been added to allow users to develop and support systems with both Java and C/C++. Users may debug Java calls into C or C++ at either source code level. Supporting Java helps developers deploy the right technology for the right task within their device while using Workbench as the common development environment.
• Based on the Eclipse 3.2.1 framework: This version of Workbench is based on Eclipse version 3.2.1, which is an upgrade from version 3.1 - used in Workbench 2.5. As the DSDP project lead in Eclipse, Wind River is committed to helping customers stay current with the latest versions of Eclipse each year.

Wind River Linux Platform Integration Plug-Ins for Workbench 2.6

• New Wind River Linux Patch Manager: The Patch Manager makes it even easier for developers to visually import and manage Linux kernel patches provided by Wind River and the community.
• Wind River ScopeTools support uClibc: uClibc is a small footprint version of the GNU C library. Those using or planning to use uClibc can now leverage the power of Wind River ScopeTools for dynamic visual analysis.
• QEMU supported as a target emulator: QEMU is an open source processor emulator. It allows users to emulate Wind River Linux and device-focused middleware technology on specific target processor architectures, rather than run the target software in native mode on a Linux host. Using QEMU is more accurate than native mode simulation and can be easier and less expensive than using actual target hardware.

VxWorks Platform Plug-Ins for Workbench 2.6

• Workbench On-Chip Debugging support for VxWorks Minimal Kernel Layer (MKL): MKL users can now debug using Wind River® Workbench, On-Chip Debugging Edition. Developers can continue to use a common tool set across the enterprise, even when the device operating system is scaled to extremely small footprints (as small as 36 Kb).
• Improved performance of VxWorks Image Projects: Users with projects containing a large number of files will see a performance improvement for VxWorks Image Projects.
• Enhanced kernel object viewer: Functionality improvements include a new hierarchical organization to more easily organize many objects, and a new name display for I/O devices.

New Wind River Developer Center

Developers will be able to access online resources such as code samples, video tutorials, and community-provided tips via the new Workbench Developer Center. The Developer Center is a Web-based repository of community and Wind River knowledge about how to get the most from VxWorks and Wind River Linux solutions using Workbench. The developer centre is accessed through either a view in the Workbench development environment, or online at: http://www.windriver.com/developers/workbench/

About Wind River
Wind River is the global leader in Device Software Optimization (DSO). Wind River enables companies to develop, run and manage device software faster, better, at lower cost and more reliably. Wind River platforms are pre-integrated, fully standardized enterprise-wide development solutions. They reduce effort, cost and risk and optimize quality and reliability at all phases of the device software development process from concept to deployed product.

Founded in 1981, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, California, with operations worldwide. To learn more, visit Wind River at http://www.windriver.com.

About Oxford Semiconductor
Oxford Semiconductor designs and markets high performance connectivity solutions for the storage, multimedia, communication, computing, and industrial markets. Founded in 1992, Oxford is a privately owned company headquartered in Milpitas, California. Oxford recently acquired TransDimension, a fabless semiconductor company based in Irvine, Calif. TransDimension provides USB connectivity solutions and software for embedded applications.
As the market leader in IEEE1394 (FireWire) and USB interface controllers for direct attached storage applications, Oxford Semiconductor has shipped more than 10 million devices, and today supplies all of the world's major external storage manufacturers.

Oxford Semiconductor also has a strong reputation in high-speed serial communication chips, and offers complete solutions for bridging between a wide range of standard computer interfaces.

Through its FireWire audio controllers, Oxford Semiconductor has led the development of breakout boxes, external sound cards and multi-channel speaker systems, providing laptop users with quality sound for the very first time.