More software info. Not new stuff, but some folks may not know.
Sigma Game Embeds Raima?s Database Technology
In New Generation Of Casino Gaming Machines
High-performance Raima DBMS in gambling equipment,
built with Wind River Systems? Tornado development environment,
heralds age of ?smarter? devices
Seattle, WA?February 23, 1999 - A new generation of slot machines from industry leader Sigma Game Inc.
creates a more exciting user experience and supports easier customization and maintenance through the use of the
latest embedded systems technology. Sigma Game?s new Select Series is built using Wind River?s Tornado?
development environment and VxWorks© real-time operating system and Raima Corporation?s RDM/Vx
high-performance database management system. Sigma predicts that the Select Series? features, supported by
cutting edge embedded technology, will contribute to longer play and to enhanced revenue for casinos.
Gambling has existed for centuries. Why incorporate real-time technology and a fast database management system
today?
?Users experience more excitement when presented with a richer array of betting options and payoffs, and they
respond to games that involve them in a storyline,? says Marcus Prater, Sigma Game?s Marketing Director. Such
features require gaming devices to ?remember? and respond to many more events and user selections. To further
enhance the user experience, the Select Series incorporates sparkling graphics and sound features, which must be
controlled in real time.
Consider the Select Series? debut game, the dazzling, character-driven Where?s Henry. This game follows the
escapades of Henry, a friendly, funny fugitive hiding in Henryville. Players can bet up to nine coins on five
lines?the traditional center pay line, as well as top and bottom pay lines and even diagonal lines. When three
Henry symbols appear on this video slot?s 19-inch high-resolution screen, players take a second-screen trip to
Henryville, where events such as finding Henry in his hideouts can multiply the reward.
The VxWorks© operating system controls the Select Series? 3D graphics, animation and stereo sound precisely,
creating an exhilarating experience. The instant data retrieval provided by the RDM/Vx DBMS also contributes to
the building excitement of game play. The Raima database contains important game and general machine
information critical to keeping the real time play on track ? including the machine?s predefined ?payoff table.?
Just as impressive are the development and maintenance advantages conferred by the RDM/Vx database and Wind
River?s Tornado?. In the past, Sigma developers used an operating system that was proprietary to the game
hardware. The Sigma engineering team created a ?lookup table? that held betting information for each game, and
this table had to be translated into Assembler Language and burned onto each machine?s eprom.
?It was hard-coded and difficult to maintain,? says Alec Ginsburg, project leader.
The move to a Pentium processor and Tornado made many tools available, including commercial database
management systems. The engineers at first assumed they would use a DBMS based on SQL, the standard
querying and storage interface for Enterprise databases. However, after looking at Raima?s RDM/Vx, they realized
that Raima?s C function library for database manipulation and control was more suited to their performance needs.
?It?s hard to imagine SQL, a high level interface, providing the kind of precision and rapid retrieval that we
accomplished using Raima?s C API,? Alec said. The memory and disk storage ?footprint? of RDM/Vx were also quite
small, compared the requirements of a typical SQL DBMS.
The use of a DBMS in this device has made maintenance much easier, as well. In the past, payoff table
changes?required sometimes by regulators and by Sigma?s casino customers?involved recoding in Assembler
Language, and burning a new eprom chip. With the Select Series, payoff tables are written off-line and transferred
to storage media within the game, greatly reducing the time required to create new betting options or make other
game changes.
?This is really enabling us to conform quickly to customer requirements,? Alec said.
He also praised Tornado. When their team moved to the Pentium hardware, ?we evaluated five or six of the
embedded environments and operating systems, and Tornado offered the best performance for the money, and
they were willing to work with us to get our project going? he said. ?It was evident they really understood the
embedded market.?
?Sigma Game?s Select Series offers a prime example of how embedded, real-time systems using Tornado and
VxWorks are expanding the capabilities of consumer devices,? said Tracy Butler, Wind River Systems? Director of
Strategic Programs.
?Raima Corporation is an important Tornado Partner, and RDM/Vx provides a key tool for building sophisticated
data management into Tornado-based embedded applications,? Butler said.
?RDM/Vx and Wind River's Tornado make a powerful combination for real-time applications,? noted Steven
Graves, Raima?s President. ?We will continue to work in partnership with Wind River to support embedded systems
developers such as Sigma Game with fast, reliable and flexible data management tools.?
Sigma Game Inc.
Sigma Game Inc., a privately held Las Vegas-based company with a strong background of innovation and quality
in the gaming industry, serves every casino market in the U.S. and is established in Canada, Central America,
South America and the Caribbean. Sigma maintains sales and service locations in Las Vegas, Reno and Laughlin,
Nev., Atlantic City, N.J., Kansas City, Mo., Biloxi, Miss., Hollywood, Fla., and Germantown, Tenn.
Tornado Development Environment with VxWorks OS
Tornado provides the embedded developer a new interactive cross-development environment comprised of
coordinated tools that incur little or no overhead in target resources. It consists of three integrated components:
the Tornado tool suite, a set of powerful tools and utilities on both the host and the target; VxWorks, the industry's
most powerful and scalable real-time operating system, which executes on the embedded target processor; and a
full range of communications options such as Ethernet, serial line, ICE or ROM emulator for the target connection
to the host.
Completely open and extensible, Tornado also facilitates the use of third-party and custom tools. VxWorks
supports a wide range of industry standards including POSIX 1003.1b Real-Time Extensions, ANSI C, and TCP/IP
networking.
At the heart of the VxWorks run-time system is the highly efficient wind© microkernel, which supports real-time
features including fast multitasking, interrupt support, and both pre-emptive and round-robin scheduling. The
microkernel design allows VxWorks to minimize system overhead and respond quickly to external events.
For more information on Wind River products please call your local Wind River sales representative or call 510 748
4100 or 1-800-545-WIND.
RDM/Vx
Similarly, Raima Database Manager for VxWorks (RDM/Vx) is the embedded database of choice for applications
requiring low-level database control, a small memory footprint, and a high level of application customization.
RDM/Vx consists of a fast database engine, along with a comprehensive library of C functions for
record-by-record database manipulation and control. RDM/Vx provides flexibility through the unique architectural
choices it provides to developers. RDM/Vx fully supports the relational database model, in which records are stored
in tables and accessed via b-tree indexes. It also allows development under the pointer-based network data
models. Records in network model databases are physically joined, with pointers, which allows rapid querying and
more realistic modeling of real world information. With Raima Database Manager for VxWorks, developers can
combine features of the network and relational data models, creating a design that precisely fits the needs of their
application.
Raima Corporation
Raima Corporation, with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, provides the database technology that is built into
thousands of leading applications. In addition to Raima Database Manager, Raima also produces Velocis Database
Server, a client/server, ODBC SQL database; Raima Object Manager, a class library that encapsulates object
storage and database navigation in C++ classes, providing an object-oriented interface to Raima databases;
database reporting and analysis tools; and consulting, training and other services through a Vista Development
Corporation subsidiary. For more information on Raima, call 800 327-2462 (206 515-9477 internationally) or visit its
Web site at raima.com.
For more information, contact:
Ted A. Kenney
Marketing Manager
(206) 748-5290
tkenney@raima.com
¸2000 Wind River Systems
Walt |
