ALAMEDA, Calif., Sept. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- In a major announcement, Wind River Systems (Nasdaq:WIND) today announced its entry into the $3.4 billion* programmable Digital Signal Processor (DSP) market. Wind River's Tornado(TM) for DSP is the only complete and open integrated software development environment for the programmable DSP platform. Wind River's standard Tornado environment is the leading development system in the approximately $2.0** billion traditional 32-bit/64-bit embedded systems market.
Tornado for DSP provides developers of DSP-based embedded applications a full set of powerful, intuitive and graphical tools and a new real-time operating system (WiSP(TM)) that scales to under 2K to improve developer productivity without affecting the application's performance. This new tool suite and WiSP will be especially appropriate for building DSP products in the communications, multimedia, image processing and navigation market segments. Tornado for DSP will be initially available for Motorola's (NYSE:MOT) 56300 DSP family.
``DSP has emerged as one of the fastest-growing areas in the electronics industry, with shipments of DSP chips expected to outpace those of general-purpose and embedded microprocessor chips for the foreseeable future***,'' said Ron Abelmann, president and CEO of Wind River Systems. ``Applications are getting more complex, but DSP software development tools have remained fairly primitive and text-based. The time is right for bringing Wind River's expertise to this growing market.''
Software in the Critical Path
Rapid advances in DSP technologies, combined with more ambitious applications, increase the complexity -- and design effort required -- to architect, program, debug, test, verify and document embedded DSP applications. Even designing a relatively simple DSP algorithm can involve hundreds of hours of development effort.
``The development of DSP-based embedded application software is a critical component and significant challenge for many companies building digital products,'' said David Larrimore, vice president of marketing for Wind River. ``It's been proven time and again in the traditional embedded systems arena that an integrated and graphical tool suite can reduce development time by weeks or months. Tornado for DSP brings this level of functionality and productivity to the DSP market for the first time.''
Based on Wind River's award-winning Tornado development environment for embedded systems but designed specifically for the memory constraints and performance demands of DSP applications, Tornado for DSP provides the developer an interactive cross-development environment comprised of coordinated tools that incur virtually no overhead in target resources. This new development environment consists of three integrated components: the Tornado for DSP tool suite, a set of host-based tools and utilities; WiSP, a powerful and scalable real-time operating system designed specifically for DSPs; and a connection strategy for host / target communications.
Open Environment Brings State-of-the-Art Tools to DSP Developers In contrast to stand-alone approaches to DSP application development, Tornado for DSP offers an open integrated development environment that includes a full range of Wind River and third party development tools. To facilitate integration of non-Wind River tools, several application programming interfaces (APIs) are available and published for reference, from GUI interfaces to connection implementation.
The Tornado for DSP tool suite offers a GNU-based compiler, linker and assembler; the CrossWind(TM) debugger for task-aware and system level debugging; a browser for graphically displaying WiSP code, objects, memory allocation, message queues, semaphores and other structures pertaining to an application; and an instruction set simulator for host-based application design and simulation without the presence of application hardware. Wind River is also offering the optional WindView(TM) system visualization tool for graphically debugging the complicated interactions among tasks, interrupt service routines and system objects in an application.
``Wind River's products have always defined the state of the art for embedded and real-time development,'' continued Larrimore. ``Tornado for DSP's highly-integrated, scalable and open architecture continues this trend by giving developers of DSP-based embedded applications access to the market's most powerful tools.''
Host-Based Cross Development System Maintains Application's Performance One of Tornado for DSP's biggest advantages is its cross-development framework, which enables developers to have the most powerful host-based tools while maintaining the lightest possible impact on DSP target operations. This is achieved through the use of a host-based target server and a careful abstraction of the essential services performed on the target. These services are encapsulated in Tornado for DSP's target agent, which represents all of the Tornado tools on the target system. The target agent is split into two components: the proxy agent and the debug agent. The proxy agent is a layer of software that manages communications between the target and host-based target servers. The debug agent interfaces to the target application software, collecting information for analysis by host-based debugging tools and acting as a conduit for instructions and code from host to target. The debug agent is the only component that needs to be attached directly to WiSP.
``DSP-based systems need a run-time environment that minimizes both memory overhead and real-time interrupt latency,'' said Charlie Ashton, manager of DSP Hardware and Software Tools for Motorola's Wireless Subscriber Systems Division. ``This requirement for lean and fast operation has limited the availability of high-level graphical tools for DSP system developers. We welcome Wind River's introduction of a host-based cross-development framework for Motorola's DSP56300 family, which will enable major productivity gains for developers of DSP56300 software while providing a high-performance, scalable run-time environment.''
WiSP Brings Structure and Reliability to Run-time System WiSP is also designed specifically to meet the requirements of DSP applications. It retains much of Wind River's traditional wind(R) kernel API for those developers transferring familiar development techniques to the DSP-based application or combining DSPs and general purpose CPUs in a single system. WiSP enables priority-driven multitasking on a defined number of tasks, is scalable to under 2K of system memory, and clocks interrupt latency at less than 0.75 microseconds and context switches less than 4.5 microseconds when running on a Motorola 80 megahertz 56300 DSP.
``One of WiSP's main advantages is that the performance levels are predictable and can be factored into application design, as opposed to the undefined conditions faced by developers writing applications direct to hardware,'' continued Larrimore. ``WiSP adds structure and reliability to DSP application performance.''
Availability
Tornado for DSP will be available for Motorola's 56300 DSP family in Q4 of 1997. Additional processors will follow. For more information on Wind River's products, call 800-545-WIND or 510-748-4100, send e-mail to inquiries@wrs.com, or visit wrs.com.
Wind River Systems, Inc.
Wind River Systems, Inc. is the leading provider of integrated software development tools for real-time embedded applications in the Internet, telecommunications, datacommunications, office automation, networking, computer peripherals, medical, automotive, industrial, aerospace, and multimedia markets. Through the industry's most comprehensive product line and customer support, Wind River enables customers to develop and reuse application software across a variety of products and platforms, shortening development cycles and improving time-to-market. Incorporated in 1983, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, California with operations in the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, Italy, Israel, Korea, and Japan and representation worldwide. Wind River reported revenues of 64 million dollars in fiscal year 1997, a 45% increase from FY96.
Except for the historical information contained herein, this news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including but not limited to timely development, acceptance and pricing of new products, the impact of competitive products and pricing, and other risks detailed in the company's most recent SEC Form 10-K.
NOTE: Tornado, VxWorks, WiSP, WindView, CrossWind, Wind River Systems, and the Wind River Systems logo are all trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks of Wind River Systems, Inc. Tornado patent pending.
Source: Forward Concepts/EDN Magazine Special Report, 7/6/96; 1997 Revenue Forecast for Programmable DSPs Source: Deutsche Morgan Grenfell PC Hardware and Software Analysis 2/13/97 Source: Forward Concepts / EDN Magazine Special Report, 7/6/96
SOURCE: Wind River Systems, Inc. |
