Found this lying around over at Intel
Make your design a star.
Thank you for your interest in intelligent I/O technology. This page is intended to provide you with more in-depth information on the I2O intelligent I/O specification, the i960® RP processor and Wind River’s IxWorks(tm) RTOS, along with links for finding all the information you might need to help make your next design a star.
I2O Software Specification
After forming the I2O special interest group (SIG) at the beginning of the year,industry leaders including Intel adopted version 1.0 of a common specification for writing device drivers that is independent of both operating system and hardware. Companies that adhere to the new I2O software specification can now alleviate the process of certifying their drivers for multiple operating systems by writing a single I2O specification-compliant driver for them all.
Because of the specification’s open architecture, and the support of leading server, operating system and networking companies, a range of innovative network and storage I/O interface capabilities are enabled for single-processor, multiprocessor and clustered PCs.
The i960 RP processor
The newest iteration of our best-selling 32-bit RISC microprocessor, the i960RP processor, was designed specifically to function as a single-chip intelligent I/O subsystem. By incorporating a unique I2O specification-compliant hardware messaging interface layer to ensure that host CPU and I/O subsystems communicate efficiently, the i960 RP allows designers to develop servers and adapters which significantly improve the speed at which users access and manipulate text, graphic, video and audio data by relieving the host CPU from servicing I/O
interrupts from attached peripheral devices.
In addition to its proven J-series core, the i960 RP processor incorporates a complete PCI-based I/O subsystem including a DMA controller, memory controller, I2C interface, APIC interface, and a
PCI-to-PCI bridge.
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To simplify the development task, the i960 RP processor includes a run-time license for Wind River Systems' IxWorks.
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This real-time operating system provides the object-oriented API described in the I2O software specification along with a comprehensive set of OS services, so that developers need only concern themselves with writing a single device driver.
The IxWorks RTOS
Wind River's IxWorks simplifies the writing of basic device
drivers while providing NOS-to-driver independence and a
prioritized multi-threaded framework that allows I/O software
from multiple vendors to coexist safely. It is fully scalable across all I2O configurations, from dedicated on-card i960 RP processors to open "on-motherboard" implementations, to complex distributed I/O systems servicing multiple CPUs.
In addition, IxWorks contains a number of features that make advanced I/O subsystems possible. It supports peer-to-peer communications, enabling two IxWorks-based systems to talk to one
another without intervention, for greater offloading of the CPU. It also manages hierarchical driver modules and intermediate service routines--software tasks like network management and RAID
control algorithms that are increasingly becoming the responsibility of the I/O processing system.
Allen - Some really big players use the exisiting i960j series, does anyone have any ideas as to how many will ditch there other RTOS's, or does WIND get a license fee regardless ????? |
