Wind River Systems
Encyclopedia
Wind River Systems, Inc. is a company providing embedded system
Embedded system
An embedded system is a computer system designed for specific control functions within a larger system. often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal...

s, development tools for embedded systems, middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...

, and other types of software. The company was founded in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

 in 1981 by Jerry Fiddler and David Wilner. On June 4, 2009, Wind River announced that Intel had bought the company for a reported $884 million. Wind River continues to exist as a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel.

Company

Wind River concentrates on middleware
Middleware
Middleware is computer software that connects software components or people and their applications. The software consists of a set of services that allows multiple processes running on one or more machines to interact...

: software and operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...

s, for information appliance
Information appliance
In general terms, an information appliance or information device is any machine or device that is usable for the purposes of computing, telecommunicating, reproducing, and presenting encoded information in myriad forms and applications....

s and devices. Their products are used in cellular phones, auto braking systems, routers, digital camera
Digital camera
A digital camera is a camera that takes video or still photographs, or both, digitally by recording images via an electronic image sensor. It is the main device used in the field of digital photography...

s, projectors, set-top box
Set-top box
A set-top box or set-top unit is an information appliance device that generally contains a tuner and connects to a television set and an external source of signal, turning the signal into content which is then displayed on the television screen or other display device.-History:Before the...

es, traffic signals, Mars Rover
Mars Rover
A Mars rover is an automated motor vehicle which propels itself across the surface of the planet Mars after landing.Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to...

s MER-A and MER-B and more.

Among their flagship products are the VxWorks
VxWorks
VxWorks is a real-time operating system developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems of Alameda, California, USA. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems.- History :...

 real-time operating system
Real-time operating system
A real-time operating system is an operating system intended to serve real-time application requests.A key characteristic of a RTOS is the level of its consistency concerning the amount of time it takes to accept and complete an application's task; the variability is jitter...

 (which began as an add-on to the VRTX operating system in the early 1980s), the Wind River Linux operating system, and the Eclipse-based Wind River Workbench IDE
Integrated development environment
An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

 (which has superseded the previous Tornado environment). Wind River's head offices are located at 500 Wind River Way, Alameda, California
Alameda, California
Alameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. The Bay Farm Island portion of the city is adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. At the 2010 census, the city had a...

. , their strategic theme is device software optimization.

Competitors

As of 2009, their competitors include:
  • DDC-I, Inc.
    DDC-I, Inc.
    DDC-I, Inc. is a software development company providing real-time operating systems, software development tools and software services for safety critical embedded applications. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, DDC-I is a privately held corporation.-History:...

     makers of the Deos and HeartOS RTOSes
  • Green Hills Software
    Green Hills Software
    Green Hills Software is a privately owned company that builds operating systems and development tools for embedded systems. The company was founded in 1982 by Dan O'Dowd and Carl Rosenberg...

     (makers of the INTEGRITY
    Integrity (operating system)
    INTEGRITY is a real-time operating system produced and marketed by Green Hills Software. It is royalty-free, POSIX-certified, and intended for use in embedded systems needing reliability, availability, and fault tolerance. It is built atop the velOSity microkernel and is intended mainly for modern...

     and velOSity RTOS)
  • QNX
    QNX
    QNX is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. The product was originally developed by Canadian company, QNX Software Systems, which was later acquired by Canadian BlackBerry-producer Research In Motion.-Description:As a microkernel-based...

     Inc. (makers of the QNX Neutrino system)
  • ENEA AB
    ENEA AB
    ENEA is global information technology company with its headquarters in Kista, Sweden that provides real-time operating systems and consulting services...

     Inc. (makers of the Operating System Embedded
    Operating System Embedded
    The Operating System Embedded is a real-time embedded operating system created by the Swedish information technology company ENEA AB. Bengt Eliasson, who at the time was a consultant from ENEA with an assignment at Ericsson, wrote the basic parts of the kernel...

     or Enea OSE RTOS)
  • LynuxWorks
    LynuxWorks
    LynuxWorks, Inc. is a San Jose, California software company founded in 1988. LynuxWorks produces embedded operating systems and tools for using full virtualization and paravirtualization in embedded systems...

     (makers of the LynxOS RTOS
    LynxOS
    The LynxOS RTOS is a Unix-like real-time operating system from LynuxWorks . Sometimes known as the Lynx Operating System, LynxOS features full POSIX conformance and, more recently, Linux compatibility...

    )
  • SYSGO
    SYSGO
    SYSGO AG is a German company oriented in embedded software since its founding in 1991. The company is focused on the basic software building blocks for embedded systems used in critical environments such as airplanes, medical instruments or industrial automation...

     (makers of PikeOS
    PikeOS
    PikeOS is a microkernel-based real-time operating system made by SYSGO AG. It is targeted at safety and security critical embedded systems. It provides a partitioned environment for multiple operating systems with different design goals, safety requirements, or security requirements to coexist in a...

     RTOS and ELinOS
    ELinOS
    ELinOS is a commercial development environment for embedded Linux. It consists of a Linux distribution for the target embedded system and development tools for a development host computer. The development host computer usually is a standard desktop computer running Linux or Windows...

    )
  • Mentor Graphics
    Mentor Graphics
    Mentor Graphics, Inc is a US-based multinational corporation dealing in electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics, as of 2004, ranked third in the EDA industry it helped create...

     (makers of Nucleus RTOS
    Nucleus RTOS
    Nucleus OS is a real-time operating system and toolset created by the Embedded Systems Division of Mentor Graphics for various central processing unit platforms. Nucleus OS is an embedded software solution and is in an estimated 2.11 billion devices worldwide.Development is typically done on a...

    )
  • The real-time and embedded product lines of Microsoft
    Microsoft
    Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

     (largely Windows CE
    Windows CE
    Microsoft Windows CE is an operating system developed by Microsoft for embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinct operating system and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows...

     and Windows NT Embedded
    Windows NT
    Windows NT is a family of operating systems produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It was a powerful high-level-language-based, processor-independent, multiprocessing, multiuser operating system with features comparable to Unix. It was intended to complement...

    )
  • Various products based on Linux
    Linux
    Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

     made by MontaVista
    MontaVista
    MontaVista Software is a software developer that develops embedded Linux system software, development tools, and related software. Its products are targeted at other corporations developing embedded systems such as automotive electronics, communications equipment, mobile phones, and other...

    , TimeSys
    TimeSys
    Timesys is a privately owned company that helps software development teams build and maintain a custom Linux platform for a wide variety of embedded processors from semiconductor manufacturers such as Atmel, Freescale, Intel, Texas Instruments, and Xilinx....

     and others.

History

Wind River Systems was formed by a partnership of Jerry Fiddler and Dave Wilner. In 1981, Fiddler had come out of Berkeley Labs to write software for control system
Control system
A control system is a device, or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or system.There are two common classes of control systems, with many variations and combinations: logic or sequential controls, and feedback or linear controls...

s, but wanted to pursue a career in computer generated music, which he funded through a consultancy business focused on real-time. His early clients included the National Football League
National Football League
The National Football League is the highest level of professional American football in the United States, and is considered the top professional American football league in the world. It was formed by eleven teams in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, with the league changing...

 and film director Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...

 — for whom he designed a unique film editing system. Wilner, a former colleague at Berkeley, joined Fiddler and they formed a partnership called Wind River Systems (named after Wind River, Wyoming
Wind River (Wyoming)
The Wind River is the name applied to the upper reaches of the Bighorn River in Wyoming in the United States. The Wind River is long. The two rivers are sometimes referred to as the Wind/Bighorn.-Course:...

, where Fiddler had vacationed that year). Wind River was incorporated in 1983, with each partner contributing $3,000 and a desk to the business.

Their most significant acquisition came in 1999 when they purchased one of their major competitors, Integrated Systems Inc., makers of pSOS
PSOS
pSOS is a real time operating system , created in about 1982 by Alfred Chao, and developed/marketed for the first part of its life by his company Software Components Group...

. Wind River has since discontinued the pSOS product line and has recommended existing pSOS customers move to VxWorks.

VxWorks

VxWorks is the original product of Wind River. It is a real-time operating system intended for embedded devices. It runs on many architectures, and supports features such as SMP, IPv6, TIPC and memory protection.

Wind River Linux

Wind River's Linux product is source code and a build system that generate runtime images suitable for embedded devices. It supports a variety of architectures, including ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

, MIPS
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...

, PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

, IA32 and SPARC
SPARC
SPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....

.

In 2004, Wind River announced a partnership with Red Hat
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an S&P 500 company in the free and open source software sector, and a major Linux distribution vendor. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina with satellite offices worldwide....

 to create a new Linux-based distribution for embedded devices. Wind River has since ended its partnership with Red Hat and now ships its own Linux distribution optimized for embedded Linux development.

Wind River released the first version of its embedded Linux distribution, Platform for Network Equipment - Linux Edition (PNE-LE) 1.0 in 2005. It was registered against the Carrier Grade Linux 2.0 specification and supported IA32 and PPC architectures. They added other platforms in subsequent releases, General Purpose Platform - Linux Edition (GPP-LE) and Platform for Consumer Devices - Linux Edition PCD-LE) starting in version 1.4.

On March 16, 2009, Wind River announced Wind River Linux 3.0.

On February 20, 2007, FSMLabs' embedded market was acquired by Wind River Systems. Wind River maintains the free versions of RTLinux
RTLinux
RTLinux or RTCore is a hard realtime RTOS microkernel that runs the entire Linux operating system as a fully preemptive process.It was developed by Victor Yodaiken , Michael Barabanov , Cort Dougan and others at the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and then as a commercial product at...

 http://www.rtlinuxfree.com/ previously offered by FSMLabs; and Wind River committed to continue to offer the FSMLab approach to RTLinux as part of their product line rebranded as Wind River Real-Time Core for Wind River Linux.

On August 7, 2007, Palm Inc. announced that it had chosen Wind River Systems as the software solution for its (later aborted) Palm Foleo
Palm Foleo
The Palm Foleo was a planned subnotebook computer that was announced by mobile device manufacturer Palm Inc. on May 30, 2007, and canceled three months later. It intended to serve as a companion for smartphones including Palm's own Treo line...

.

In 2008, Wind River announced cooperation with BMW
BMW
Bayerische Motoren Werke AG is a German automobile, motorcycle and engine manufacturing company founded in 1916. It also owns and produces the Mini marque, and is the parent company of Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. BMW produces motorcycles under BMW Motorrad and Husqvarna brands...

, Intel and Magneti Marelli for development of a Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

-based open-source platform to control in-car electronics, which was extended in the GENIVI Alliance
GENIVI Alliance
The GENIVI Alliance is a non-profit consortium founded on March 2, 2009 by BMW Group, Delphi, GM, Intel, Magneti-Marelli, PSA Peugeot Citroen, Visteon, and Wind River Systems. The goal of the alliance is to establish a globally competitive, Linux-based operating system, middleware and platform for...

 in 2009.

BSD/OS

Wind River acquired the software assets of Berkeley Software Design
Berkeley Software Design
Berkeley Software Design Inc. was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS , a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PC compatible computer systems...

 Inc. (BSDI) in 2001. These comprised the BSD/OS
BSD/OS
BSD/OS was a proprietary version of the BSD operating system developed by Berkeley Software Design, Inc. ....

 operating system, plus involvement in the FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

 open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 project. The FreeBSD unit was divested as a separate entity in 2002 as FreeBSD Mall, Inc..

Faced with competition from the open source FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...

 and Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

-based operating systems, Wind River discontinued BSD/OS in December 2003. However, by this time some technology from BSD/OS had been contributed to the open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 BSD community.

Wind River (Diab) Compiler

Wind River acquired the Diab Compiler as part of its acquisition of Integrated Systems Inc. Originally designed by Wind River's current CTO, Tomas Evensen, it is now available as part of Wind River's VxWorks platforms. It can also be licensed separately for non-VxWorks users. The compiler supports PowerPC
PowerPC
PowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...

, ARM
ARM architecture
ARM is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by ARM Holdings. It was named the Advanced RISC Machine, and before that, the Acorn RISC Machine. The ARM architecture is the most widely used 32-bit ISA in numbers produced...

, MIPS
MIPS architecture
MIPS is a reduced instruction set computer instruction set architecture developed by MIPS Technologies . The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit, and later versions were 64-bit...

, SH, ColdFire, TriCore
Tricore
TriCore™ is a 32-bit microcontroller architecture from Infineon. It unites the elements of a RISC processor core, a microcontroller and a DSP in one chip package.- History and background :...

™, Intel and mcore architectures.

Tilcon Graphics Suite

Tilcon Software Limited was acquired by Wind River in 2009. The Tilcon software consists of a graphical user interface builder - a tool that runs on a Windows or Linux host - and a GUI engine that runs on an embedded processor that renders graphics through a number of different standard graphics libraries. The Tilcon software supports VxWorks
VxWorks
VxWorks is a real-time operating system developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems of Alameda, California, USA. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems.- History :...

, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 and Windows operating systems.

Simics

The Simics
Simics
Simics is a full-system simulator used to run unchanged production binaries of the target hardware at high-performance speeds. Simics was originally developed by the Swedish Institute of Computer Science , and then spun off to Virtutech for commercial development in 1998...

 full-system simulator
Full system simulation
A full-system simulator is a computer program that simulates computer systems at such a level of detail that complete software stacks from real systems can run on the simulator without any modification. A full system simulator effectively provides virtual hardware that is independent of the nature...

 was added to Wind River's product portfolio after the acquisition of Virtutech
Virtutech
Virtutech was founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science , in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2004, the headquarters was moved to San Jose, California, USA. The Stockholm site remains the company's R&D center. The company's main product is Simics software, used by teams of...

 by Intel in 2010.

Acquisitions

  • 1999: Integrated Systems Inc.
  • 2000: merge staff of Dragonfly Software Consulting
  • 2000: Embedded Support Tools Corp. (ESTC)
  • 2000: ICEsoft (Bergen
    Bergen
    Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....

    , Norway
    Norway
    Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

    )
  • 2000: AudeSi Technologies Inc. (Calgary
    Calgary
    Calgary is a city in the Province of Alberta, Canada. It is located in the south of the province, in an area of foothills and prairie, approximately east of the front ranges of the Canadian Rockies...

    , Alberta
    Alberta
    Alberta is a province of Canada. It had an estimated population of 3.7 million in 2010 making it the most populous of Canada's three prairie provinces...

    , Canada
    Canada
    Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

    )
  • 2001: Berkeley Software Design
    Berkeley Software Design
    Berkeley Software Design Inc. was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS , a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for PC compatible computer systems...

     Inc. (BSDI)
  • 2005: ScopeTools business unit from Real-Time Innovations
    Real-Time Innovations
    Real Time Innovations, Inc. is a computer networking software company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California specializing in publish/subscribe middleware. The company's major competitors are PrismTech, 29West, and TIBCO Software.- History :...

  • 2006: Interpeak AB (Stockholm
    Stockholm
    Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

    , Sweden
    Sweden
    Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

    )
  • 2007: Assets of FSMLabs (Socorro, New Mexico
    Socorro, New Mexico
    Socorro is a city in Socorro County in the U.S. state of New Mexico. It stands in the Rio Grande Valley at an elevation of . The population was 9,051 at the 2010 census...

    , United States
    United States
    The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

    )
  • 2008: MIZI (Seoul
    Seoul
    Seoul , officially the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea. A megacity with a population of over 10 million, it is the largest city proper in the OECD developed world...

    , South Korea
    South Korea
    The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

    )
  • 2009: Tilcon Software Limited (Ottawa
    Ottawa
    Ottawa is the capital of Canada, the second largest city in the Province of Ontario, and the fourth largest city in the country. The city is located on the south bank of the Ottawa River in the eastern portion of Southern Ontario...

    , Ontario
    Ontario
    Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

    , Canada
    Canada
    Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

    )
  • 2010: Virtutech
    Virtutech
    Virtutech was founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science , in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2004, the headquarters was moved to San Jose, California, USA. The Stockholm site remains the company's R&D center. The company's main product is Simics software, used by teams of...

     (Stockholm
    Stockholm
    Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

    , Sweden
    Sweden
    Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

    )

Sponsorship

Wind River sponsors the BASIC WonderCup Challenge, a San Francisco Bay Area
San Francisco Bay Area
The San Francisco Bay Area, commonly known as the Bay Area, is a populated region that surrounds the San Francisco and San Pablo estuaries in Northern California. The region encompasses metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose, along with smaller urban and rural areas...

 science knowledge competition for high school students.

External links

  • Company page
  • http://www.rtlinuxfree.com/
  • Lord of the Toasters an article from Wired magazine
  • Wind River's Linux Transformation an article from CNET
    CNET
    CNET is a tech media website that publishes news articles, blogs, and podcasts on technology and consumer electronics. Originally founded in 1994 by Halsey Minor and Shelby Bonnie, it was the flagship brand of CNET Networks and became a brand of CBS Interactive through CNET Networks' acquisition...

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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