NEWS

Siemens Cuts Costs and Accelerates Time-to-Market with Wind River VxWorks

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

  • Wind River real-time operating system selected to power Siemens’ high-performance industrial PCs.
  • VxWorks enables Siemens to accelerate time-to-market by four months and cut engineering costs by 50%.
  • Wind River showcases Siemens technology in VxWorks demonstrations at SPS IPC Drives, booth no. 6-305.

SPS IPC DRIVES, NUREMBERG, Germany — Nov. 25, 2014Wind River®, a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems, has announced that Siemens Digital Factory Division has chosen the VxWorks® real-time operating system (RTOS) as the foundation for its market-leading high-performance industrial PCs.

Siemens’ industrial PCs operate in extremely demanding environments, often directly on the plant floor. Because a standard PC operating system does not always fit the requirements of sophisticated industrial applications, Siemens required an RTOS to execute tasks requiring determinism, fast response times, and safety. The company concluded it could eliminate a number of steps in development and significantly reduce costs with a proven commercial RTOS, so VxWorks was chosen to replace Siemens’ in-house-developed operating system.

In addition to Wind River’s long track record of success in the industrial segment, the company’s deep knowledge of markets like aviation, automotive, and defense, where reliability, safety, and security are critical, was an important factor in Siemens’ selection of VxWorks.

“Using VxWorks versus building and maintaining our own operating system has enabled us to accelerate our time-to-market by four months, cut our engineering costs by 50%, and improve the overall productivity of our engineering team,” said Anton Sauter, product manager SIMATIC IPC at Siemens. “The combination of Wind River industry-leading technology with Siemens’ engineering expertise has resulted in a high-performance industrial PC for today’s high-volume production environments.”

Alexander Damisch, senior director of business development at Wind River, commented, “For two decades, Siemens has been setting the standard for innovative, durable industrial computers. Enabling them to deliver a superior product to market more quickly and gain a competitive edge is extremely rewarding. This is a great example of the trend we’re seeing where companies that originally chose to build are now choosing to buy, migrating from in-house systems to commercial solutions that allow them to focus more on value-added business capabilities instead of maintaining the core platform.”

Wind River is showcasing Siemens technology in its VxWorks demonstrations at SPS IPC Drives this week, booth no. 6-305.

More information about VxWorks is available at http://tinyurl.com/VxWorks. And to learn more about Wind River industrial solutions, visit http://tinyurl.com/WRIndustrial.

About Wind River

Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel® Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems. The company has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981, and its technology is found in nearly 2 billion products. Wind River offers the industry's most comprehensive embedded software portfolio, supported by world-class global professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind River delivers the technology and expertise that enables the innovation and deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com.

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Wind River is a trademark or registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. and its affiliates. Other names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Information
Jessica Miller
Global Corporate Communications

NEWS

Wind River Delivers Accelerated Safety Certification for Multi-core with New VxWorks Profile

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

  • Safety Profile for VxWorks delivers functionality aimed at development of safety critical systems across wide range of market segments.
  • New features include advanced time and space partitioning on multi-core and optional IEC 61508-3 SIL3 certification evidence package.
  • Wind River continues its legacy of helping customers address the most critical safety requirements with robust safety features across its product portfolio.

ALAMEDA, Calif. — November 18, 2014 — Wind River®, a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems, has introduced a safety profile for the next-generation version of its VxWorks® real-time operating system (RTOS). The profile adds safety features to VxWorks 7 aimed at development of safety critical systems in industrial, medical, transportation, aerospace, and defense. Additionally, Wind River has enhanced its Virtualization Profile for VxWorks.

The new Safety Profile for VxWorks delivers advanced time and space partitioning capabilities to ensure reliable, interference-free consolidation of multiple applications with different levels of safety criticality on one hardware platform, single or multi-core. Consolidation helps customers meet stringent safety requirements with a variety of system design options while driving down bill-of-material and maintenance costs. Furthermore, separation of applications of different criticality levels allows customers to update specific applications in a targeted fashion, without having to retest or recertify the entire system.

In addition, the profile has received pre-approval by TÜV SÜD for IEC 61508-3 SIL3 conformance. The optional certification evidence package will help VxWorks customers reduce cost, risk, and time-to-certification for their embedded systems. Safety Profile will also serve as the future foundation that will help customers certify their devices to additional IEC standards.

"With Safety Profile for VxWorks, developers can take full advantage of technological advances in microprocessors that VxWorks enables, with the confidence that they will have a strong OS foundation to meet the most demanding safety certification standards," said Dinyar Dastoor, vice president of product management at Wind River. "For three-plus decades Wind River has been a trusted technology partner to companies in markets where safety and reliability are paramount, and this is just another proof point of our commitment to providing robust safety features across our product portfolio."

Separately, the recently launched Virtualization Profile for VxWorks now provides support for device virtualization through the open VirtIO standard. Device virtualization further reduces the mechanical footprint and cost base of consolidated systems, and lowers the barrier to virtualization in the embedded domain, while the use of the VirtIO standard allows any operating system to use the virtualized devices.

Recognized as the industry-leading RTOS, VxWorks boasts a modular, scalable architecture that separates the VxWorks core from middleware, applications, and other packages, enabling bug fixes, upgrades, and new feature additions to be accomplished faster.

Wind River will be showcasing the latest features and capabilities of VxWorks 7 at SPS IPC Drives in Nuremberg, Germany, November 25—27, booth no. 6-305.

More information about Safety Profile for VxWorks is available at http://tinyurl.com/VxWorksSafety.

About Wind River
Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel® Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is a world leader in delivering software for intelligent connected systems. The company has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981, and its technology is found in nearly 2 billion products. Wind River offers the industry's most comprehensive embedded software portfolio, supported by world-class global professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind River delivers the technology and expertise that enables the innovation and deployment of safe, secure, and reliable intelligent systems. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com.

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Wind River is a trademark or registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. and its affiliates. Other names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Contact Information
Jessica Miller
Global Corporate Communications