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

To: NeverRight who wrote (7312)	2/29/2000 8:06:00 AM
From: Snowshoe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10309

Renewed Wind River to lay out road map at show techweb.com EE TIMES February 28, 2000, Issue: 1102 Alexander Wolfe CHICAGO - Wind River, the 600-pound gorilla that has surged to the forefront of the embedded market, will have its coming-out party here this week at the Embedded Systems Conference/Spring. Though Wind River itself has been the longtime leader in real-time-operating systems (RTOSes) and tools, its acquisition of number-two vendor Integrated Systems Inc. (ISI) has propelled the combined company to new heights. Wind River will use the conference to outline its technology road map and to formally introduce its new executives. Meanwhile, other hotly debated embedded issues-ranging from Java to Linux to Internet appliances-will find a voice amid the relative calm of ESC/Spring-as compared with the din at the show's fall incarnation in San Jose, Calif. Despite such enticing technologies, the main buzz at the show is likely to come from Wind River. "We're launching a new company with billion-dollar opportunities," said Tom St. Dennis, Wind River's chief executive officer. "We will triple over the next three years." Details at ESC/Spring At the show, St. Dennis will lay out a multipronged strategy that includes beefed-up research and development spending, a consolidated field sales force of 550 people, alliances with semiconductor companies and the ability to field cutting-edge networking technologies. St. Dennis wouldn't provide more specifics, saying they would come at ESC. "As for the product side, I think everybody is interested to know how we will go forward with the VxWorks and pSoS RTOSes," he said. St. Dennis said that the company intends to support both RTOSes for the time being but will eventually move to one or the other. St. Dennis did address the importance of communications to the company, noting that "the embedded space is poised for some real substantial growth in routers, switchers and cable modems." To that end, Wind River will announce an alliance with Tensilica (Santa Clara, Calif.), a maker of reconfigurable processors aimed at network applications. Perhaps the biggest shock at this year's ESC/Spring will be the unfulfilled promise of real-time Java. True, the technology has taken shape in dozens of clone virtual-machine implementations. and in Sun Microsystems Inc.'s PersonalJava. However, last year the conference was buzzing with advance word on great things to come. The reason for this year's relative silence may be a split in viewpoints among embedded developers. In the Internet-appliance realm, Java developers appear to be plugging away, if quietly. "We see a big a demand among our customers for PersonalJava-mainly in Internet appliances-because people are past the learning curve," said Mal Raddalgoda, director of strategic marketing for Espial Group Inc. (Kanata, Ontario). The company makes downsized browsers aimed at Web-pad-like devices. Other experts, however, are not yet willing to commit to the extra memory footprint and software libraries that Java tends to require. As for Linux, it will be the subject of a Monday evening panel that will discuss whether such "open-source" software is ready for prime time as far as the embedded world is concerned. While the full-blown implementation is available essentially for free, that operating system is more appropriate for desktop and enterprise markets. The dynamics of Linux in embedded are not quite so clear. When Transmeta unveiled its embedded processor in January, it also noted that it had spun a mobile version of Linux. However, Transmeta officials did not say whether that software would be open-source.