I don't believe this article from EE Times has been mentioned before:
May 19, 1997, Issue: 954
Section: News
Wind River spins real-time OS tuned to I2O architecture
By Terry Costlow
Alameda, Calif. - Wind River Systems Inc. is rolling out an operating
system that will make it much simpler to use the I2O architecture to
dramatically improve the performance of PC-based servers. The real-time OS, called IxWorks, is one of the final pieces I2O needs for takeoff. Its release also marks a potentially dramatic shift for Wind River, which has heretofore played only in the fragmented embedded-systems market.
IxWorks handles the message passing that makes Intelligent I/O (I2O) an
important part of systems like servers, that have many I/O transactions.
By adding the I2O architecture and an I/O processor (IOP), designers
can build systems that are much more powerful than those that continually
interrupt the host CPU to manage I/O tasks.
Intel takes a license
"I2O has the potential to scale from the PC server to the enterprise level,''
said Jerry Fiddler, chairman of the board of Wind River, here, and author
of the software portion of the I2O spec. "Our licensing agreement with
Intel is the next step toward that end."
Indeed, Wind River's IxWorks will be widely distributed thanks to a
decision by Intel Corp. to bundle a run-time license with the i960,
currently the only chip targeted at I2O processing.
"This is quite an amazing opportunity for us-it's mind boggling,'' said
Pauline Shulman, product manager at Wind River. "We have a license that
puts IxWorks in every I/O processor Intel makes. Right now, that's the
i960, but the license is for anything Intel calls an I/O processor."
However, the firm will make its money from selling tools, not real-time
licenses. Developers who want to work with IxWorks are likely to turn to
a new version of the company's Tornado tools suite tailored for I2O.
Though servers do not run in real time, most observers believe that high
speed is critical to keep an IOP running efficiently. In loaded systems, a
number of devices will be communicating with networks, peripherals and
the CPU, as well as with each other in peer-to-peer transactions.
"I2O is dependent on doing message passing over PCI," said Jim Kearns,
platform marketing manager at Intel's Connected PC Division (Chandler,
Ariz.). "That's really best done with an RTOS. The RTOS is a key
enabler, it lets you cut the number of interrupts that the host sees."
IxWorks is a fairly complex program offering benefits that arise from its
roots in VxWorks, Wind River's RTOS.
"Now that designers have an additional I/O processor, they need an
operating system for it that's about as lively and robust as the basic
operating system," said Shulman. "It has to do a lot of communication at
very high speeds. It's like having another CPU to talk to. They call I2O a
split-driver model, but it's also a split-operating system model.''
I/O demand has leapfrogged, Shulman said, "and I2O addresses that by
adding processors to do intelligent I/O. Mainframes had that problem
when they had many users, and they moved to a similar architecture. I
think we'll see the same thing happen in PC-based network servers."
Beyond speed, another benefit is that I2O simplifies driver development.
Designers who adopt it won't have to write separate drivers for each OS,
and peripheral designers won't have to write them for each card.
"Once you've written a driver for, say, a hard-disk controller, it runs on
every IOP," Shulman said. "You include it with the hardware and you
don't care who buys it. All of a sudden the driver writer's job got much
easier and the market got much bigger.''
For Wind River, PC servers represent an enormous new market
opportunity. The company is a leader in embedded systems, but that
broad market consists of many diverse segments, each with different
requirements and all needing intensive tech-nical and marketing support.
Moreover, the company seems to have the market to itself. Even though
I2O software holds broad promise, to date Wind River's RTOS is the
only show in town.
"Wind River is in an extremely strong position," said Paul Zorfass, senior
analyst at International Data Corp. (Framingham, Mass.). "The other
operating people I've talked to have not said they have plans to do
anything like this."
Industry watchers believe I2O will become common in PC architectures.
The resulting increase in performance will help PC servers attack
higher-end environments that are currently being served by RISC-based
systems.
"This [I2O] will absolutely make the Intel-class servers more competitive,"
said Zorfass. "It will put a lot of pressure on the RISC servers."
Just how much I2O can improve server performance is just starting to
become understood. Only a few products have utilized it to date, largely
because Version 1.5 of the specification was just firmed up in March.
A startup, Xpoint Technologies Inc. (Boca Raton, Fla.), that has made
I2O a centerpiece in its offerings is prepared to provide solid proof that
offloading I/O tasks from the host provides dramatic improvements.
Xpoint has performed a number of benchmarks that surprised even the
developers of products that will be unveiled later this month.
Efficiency improvement
"We've seen a 490 percent efficiency gain and an 85 percent drop in
CPU utilization using an industry-standard benchmark," said Dave Miller,
marketing director at Xpoint. "When we put an intelligent LAN card with
our peer-to-peer software and the latest version of IxWorks, CPU
utilization went from 23 percent down to 3.2 percent.''
To an end user who adds two cards, "CPU utilization will be about 9
percent,'' Miller said. "If you add one without I2O you're at 50 percent
utilization just for the I/O."
I2O can also free up the CPU by handling communications between
boards which would otherwise have to go through the host processor.
This makes it possible to do time-consuming jobs while the CPU runs
uninterrupted.
"You can do peer-to-peer communications, with one IOP talking to
another," said Wind River's Shulman. "An intelligent LAN card could talk
to a disk drive. You could also do backup of a drive without interrupting
the host, having the disk and tape controllers talk to each other. This is a
very time-consuming job that everyone has to do with a server, so it will
be one of the first applications you'll see running on the IOP."
Now that the software is available, system integration should begin moving
more swiftly. The remaining pieces are not viewed as a big obstacle.
"The only other pieces that have to come into place are the drivers that
talk to IxWorks and the operating-system modules that come from the
OS vendors, which are on the way," said Mike Salameh, president of
PLX Technology Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), which makes chips for PCI and
I2O. "Momentum for I2O is really snowballing."
Copyright r 1997 CMP Media Inc. |
