Check out the news coverage links and articles below for ISI's recent VANTAGE IA announcement.
eet.com
ISI offers WebPDA as reference platform
By Craig Matsumoto
EE Times
(08/30/99, 10:18 a.m. EDT)
eetimes.com
RTOS vendors tip embedded strategies
By Alexander Wolfe
EE Times
(08/27/99, 12:32 p.m. EDT)
zdnet.com
Trio seeks to jump-start Java-based PDAs
ISI, Mitsubishi and Sun team up on reference platform for building
wireless Internet appliances
By Anne Knowles, PC Week Online
August 30, 1999 9:00 AM ET
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Computergram
ISI Launches Internet Device Assault With Vantage Program
30/08/99
By Phil Jones
Integrated Systems Inc, the embedded real-time operating
systems and tool developer, will today announce the first of
series of reference platforms for next generation internet
appliances. The first fruits of the Sunnyvale, California
company's Internet Appliance Vantage Program is a near-market
ready, Java-based personal digital assistant (PDA) with built
in mobile communications. It represents a shot across the bows
of Wind River Systems Inc, its embedded RTOS rival which has
done its best to make the nascent "post-PC" appliance space its
own.
According to Mike Osler, ISI's UK managing director, the new
Vantage Program is an attempt to do for the emerging internet
appliance market, what the IBM PC architecture did for the
early microcomputer business: establishing a design template
that interested vendors can use to mix and match different
products and components, and bring finished systems to market
more quickly.
In this first instance, ISI's San Diego design-house
subsidiary, Doctor Design, has pulled together the 80MHz M32R
low-power processor with 2MB of on chip RAM, with Sun's pJava
language running on ISI's own pSOS embedded RTOS. The pen
interface device is also supplied with the Java DeviceTop email
and personal information manager (PIM) packages of Espial
Group. For manufacturers that don't want to use Java, ISI can
supply the reference platform running email software from the
UK's ANT Ltd natively against pSOS.
The whole platform is available on a free license basis to "any
credible manufacturer of such devices" said Osler, with ISI and
its partners set to recoup their investment via royalty
revenues. And the reference platform is almost infinitely
customizable, he claims. Different processors and application
packages can be swapped in and out according to demand, Osler
said, the unifying feature being ISI's pSOS RTOS and its
accompanying range of design and integration tools.
ISI is betting on the Vantage Program, which filled out over
the time with designs for other classes of internet device,
such as cable modems or mobile phones, being a hit with
consumer device makers and other systems builders keen to
compress the design cycle involved with bringing new products
to market. Using a Vantage reference platform could,
hypothetically, allow a manufacture such as SONY to bring an
internet ready PDA to market in a matter of months, Osler
claims, with ISI providing design, porting and integration
consultancy and services as required.
Indeed, Osler argues that the extensive support services, such
as access to the Doctor Design design services, which ISI can
offer to support the Vantage Program is likely to be its key
competitive differentiator. In a veiled reference to
competitors such as Wind River, Osler said the off-the-shelf
RTOS market is no longer driven by strictly technical issues.
"These days customers don't come back for the fastest RTOS, or
the cutest compiler. They come back for services," he said.
---------------------------------
Electronics Weekly, September 1, 1999
Web appliance designers get four month headstart
Richard Ball
A free reference design for Internet appliances has been developed by Integrated Systems Inc (ISI) in partnership with Mitsubishi, ANT, Espial and PointBase.
The design, which describes hardware, software and the mechanics all the way to the plastic case, can be used in its entirety or as a base for other applications.
"We can probably take the first four months of your R&D effort out of the equation," said Mike Osler, managing director of ISI in the UK.
The hardware design is based on Mitsubishi's M32R processor which embeds 2Mbyte of DRAM with a 32-bit processor. This is combined with a modem, LCD and touchscreen. Software includes ISI's operating system and e-mail, Web browser and standard PDA programs.
Possible applications include point-of-sale terminals, industrial control devices, an electronic book or a handheld PDA.
"We believe the future is the Internet. Clearly the market is growing exponentially," said Osler.
This design is the first in a whole series of reference platforms being developed by ISI. Others will also be based around the Internet, but different classes of application, such as set-top boxes or Web TV.
The move marks a change of direction for ISI which has previously been seen as a single product supplier, being the second largest real time operating system vendor.
"ISIhas put this consortium together, done lots of porting and productised the design," said Osler. "We're no longer just a software component supplier."
ISI is putting together a seminar programme during October to tell developers and investors more about the company's design and plans. Meetings will be held in Cambridge and Maidenhead on October 12 and 14 respectively. |
