NEWS

Wind River Releases Hardware Assisted Tool Support for Linux

  • Wind River's visionPROBE II to extend operating system support to Linux. Additional hardware assisted tools for Linux to be released.
  • Immediate hardware availability for Linux support with visionPROBE II for the IBM PowerPC 405 processor family. Wind River's tools will also support additional IBM and Motorola PowerPC devices by the end of the current quarter. Future support is also planned for various MIPS processors.
  • visionPROBE II provides the industry's most feature-rich emulation tool for board bring-up, flash programming and production test.

ALAMEDA, Calif.--October 2, 2003--Wind River Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: WIND), the worldwide market leader in embedded software and services, today announced that it is extending its industry leading hardware bring-up tools to include support for Linux. Customers can turn to Wind River for leading-edge run control and debugging tools that work with WIND RIVER(R) PLATFORMS, VxWorks(R) and embedded Linux. visionPROBE II(TM) is immediately available for the IBM PowerPC(TM) 405 family.

"Wind River's decision to support both VxWorks and Linux through its stand-alone tools business is a strategic move for the company," said Paul Zorfass, senior analyst with International Data Corporation/FTI. "With the embedded Linux tools market still in its early stage and evolving, Wind River's Linux tools offering is a welcome and an innovative response to broaden the capabilities of Linux developers. By expanding its comprehensive embedded developer tools solutions further, Wind River is reaffirming its responsiveness to the developer community and its position as an industry leader."

Unlike existing embedded Linux hardware products available today, Wind River's hardware bring-up tools provide embedded developers who choose the Linux kernel with technology innovations that solve their specific bring-up needs. By providing visibility and access to both the virtual and the physical address space, visionPROBE II gives developers the ability to track Linux virtual access and to control their physical peripherals and memory. Additionally, with its automated boot line feature, the Wind River solution allows developers to run their Linux kernel on their target processor prior to a boot loader being available.

"Wind River's decision to extend tools support to the Linux operating system is in response to our customers and to a true market need," said Dave Fraser, senior vice president, products, for Wind River. "We have a significant standalone tools business and although our customers can use the products with any technology, we like to focus additional functionality on the biggest operating systems. Linux is now very popular in embedded, but it is quite immature and challenging in the area of tools--particularly for customers bringing up and debugging on custom hardware."

Key Features and Benefits

Wind River's hardware run control and debugger products provide robust development and test tool solutions used for hardware bring-up and debugging. These tools provide the most feature-rich capabilities for board bring-up, flash programming, and production/test in the industry today. Wind River's hardware assisted tools features include:

System level debugging of the target processor: If the kernel is not running, the developer still has access to the target's resources and memory

JTAG capabilities:

  • Run control

  • Access to physical and virtual memory

  • Register files

  • JTAG commands

  • Interface via JTAG port, freeing Ethernet and serial ports for other uses


Kernel level debugging:

  • Scheduling

  • Memory allocation

  • Interrupt handler


Support for breakpoints in virtual memory
-Software and internal hardware breakpoints

Automated boot line: provides ability to run kernel on the target without having a boot loader image installed

"With this solution, our customers are able to use the operating system of their choice, and still have access to a leading-edge embedded toolset," said Lisa Su, director of PowerPC and emerging products, IBM Microelectronics. "IBM and Wind River are working together to provide solutions that best fit the needs of the embedded marketplace."

Initial host operating system support will be for Microsoft Windows. Wind River's Linux debugging solution will be available on the WIND(R)POWER ICE product and on the Linux host operating system in future releases. For more information on visionPROBE II, please visit http://www.windriver.com/products/visionprobe2/index.html

About Wind River
Wind River is the worldwide leader in embedded software and services. It provides market-specific embedded platforms that integrate real-time operating systems, development tools and technologies. Wind River's products and professional services are used in multiple markets including aerospace and defense, automotive, digital consumer, industrial, and network infrastructure. Wind River provides high-integrity technology and expertise that enables its customers to create superior products more efficiently. Companies from around the world turn to Wind River to create the most reliable products and to accelerate their time to market.

Founded in 1981, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, California, with operations worldwide. To learn more, visit Wind River at http://www.windriver.com or call Wind River at 1-800-872-4977.

Wind River Systems and the Wind River Systems logo are trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc., and VxWorks is a registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. All other names mentioned are trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks of their respective companies.

Contact Information
Jessica Miller
Global Corporate Communications