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Technology Stocks : Wind River going up, up, up! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JMD who wrote (6097)	8/17/1999 2:09:00 AM
From: Chinacat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

<typically employed in, e.g.,fuel injection systems constantly monitoring gas/oxygen ratios, heat, etc., then reporting the data to a digital system> JMD You've hit a good point, in that the real value of an RTOS is not so well defined. What you've described above is in the application domain. Even today, most Automotive companies will accomplish the above without using an RTOS. In other words, they will write a simple scheduler and will run gas/oxygen routines on this scheduler. What you're asking me, in essence, is "what is the true value of an RTOS?", and this is a tough one to answer because today's RTOS are so many things to so many people. An automotive company may use an RTOS because of it's determinism and the tools which allow their developpers to make sure that the aplication is written as tightly and safely as possible. A set top box compnay may use an RTOS more because it has good tools and has the verticallly integrated layers (GUI, Browser). Defense contractors, Aerospace firms, and NASA may want source-code and reliability. Internet Appliance companies may want time-to-market and small code size as key capabilities. Telecomm vendors may want Protocol stacks and robust networking choices, and compliance to standards. Office Automation companies may want small code size and support for multiple CPU architectures. The point is, the pressure is on, on all fronts from the users to RTOS vendors. Some of the RTOS vendors have picked their niche, and will succeed/dissapear depending on the future of their particular niche. The beauty of WindRiver, in my opinion, is that they haven't had to succumb to being a "niche player" making a relatively easy sell in a non-competitive market. Rather they've competed with niche players on all fronts and come out stronger player with every new design win. And with the deliniation between many different embedded applications blurring, this is an envious position to be in.... Cheers!

To: JMD who wrote (6097)	8/17/1999 11:06:00 AM
From: Mark Brophy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10309

You've hit an important point. A real-time "operating system" isn't really an operating system at all because it doesn't mediate the use of system resources between competing apps. If your browser and spreadsheet tried to write to the screen at the same time, you'd be looking at garbage. Microsoft provides a mechanism for both apps to use the system at the same time without tripping over each other. Even if you're a software developer such as Netscape who knows that Microsoft creates poor quality operating systems, you'll still develop your browser for Windows because there's a large potential customer base for your product. A real-time "operating system" provides a set of low-level functions to an app that has complete control of the entire system, so no mediation of resources is necessary. So, an app developer will only choose an RTOS if he believes it will increase engineering productivity. If a fuel injection system engineer is only going to use a small subset of the RTOS functions, he might choose to forgo the use of an RTOS altogether. A PC app developer has no such option. And if a competing RTOS vendor in the future offers a lower royalty rate and/or more functionality/reliability and/or better technical support, the RTOS app developer might choose the new RTOS for the next version. That threat keeps the RTOS vendors honest and they can't reap windfall profits like Microsoft. Wind River and their investment bankers sold the company in the secondary and convertible bond offerings as an "operating system" vendor like Microsoft and investors gave the company a valuation based on an earnings growth rate similar to Microsoft. Failure to understand the differences (and the nature of the investment banking industry) cost them a lot of money.