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To: John Rieman who wrote (50295)	11/13/2000 8:20:59 PM
From: Manuel Vizcaya	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 50808

eet.com Motorola DTV module includes Wind River OS By Charles J. Murray EE Times (11/13/00, 5:26 p.m. EST) PARK RIDGE, Ill. — Motorola Inc. and Wind River Systems Inc. will roll out a digital television module today (Nov. 13) that includes a production-worthy operating system. By integrating the operating system into the module, Motorola intends to simplify the development process for digital television (DTV) makers and jump-start the adoption of DTV into the marketplace. Motorola will integrate Wind River's VxWorks into its MCT5100 M-DTV module, which is based on the company's DTV chip set. The chip set includes a vestigial-sideband demodulator, MPEG decoder, DSP for audio decoding, and a PowerPC-based MPC850 microcontroller. The module will enable consumers to receive DTV and high-definition TV broadcasts using digital set-top boxes and DTVs. VxWorks will serve as a basis for running the drivers and application programs, as well as operating simple programs for such chores as channel changing and volume control. By incorporating Wind River's VxWorks, graphics and Java libraries in a production-worthy system, Motorola hopes to induce DTV makers to step up the development pace. "We've already made a significant investment in the technology on the hardware side, but we haven't been getting the returns on that investment," said Will Salahuana, vice president and general manager of Motorola's Entertainment Solutions Division (Austin, Texas). "So we asked ourselves, 'Do we want to go the extra mile to accelerate the development?' And the answer was yes." Industry first? Integration of an embedded OS in such a module is said to be an industry first. Until now, vendors typically developed hardware in isolation and incorporated operating systems only for demonstration purposes. "Until there was a paying customer on the other end," said Curt Schacker, vice president of corporate marketing and development for Wind River Systems (Alameda, Calif.), "there usually wasn't much integration done by the hardware and software companies." But, before today's introduction, Motorola and Wind River spent 18 months "pre-integrating" the hardware and software so that OEMs wouldn't have to do it later. The result of that integration is faster time-to-market for the TV maker, the companies said. "The beauty of this is that they can fully integrate this into the chassis in a matter of weeks, rather than months or years," Salahuana said. The two companies said that their partnership was driven by the complexity of the product and the demand for shorter product cycles. "Rather than use the old style, where hardware and software companies work independently and let the customers figure out how to put the pieces together, we saw an advantage to getting together ahead of time," Schacker said.