Wind River Systems, Inc. is a company providing
embedded systemAn 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,
middlewareMiddleware 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, CaliforniaBerkeley 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
middlewareMiddleware 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 systemAn 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 applianceIn 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 cameraA 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 boxA 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 RoverA 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
VxWorksVxWorks 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 systemA 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 IDEAn 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, CaliforniaAlameda 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. 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 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 INTEGRITYINTEGRITY 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 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 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 EmbeddedThe 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, 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 RTOSThe 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 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 PikeOSPikeOS 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 ELinOSELinOS 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, 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 RTOSNucleus 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 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 CEMicrosoft 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 EmbeddedWindows 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 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 MontaVistaMontaVista 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...
, TimeSysTimesys 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 systemA 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 LeagueThe 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 CoppolaFrancis 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, WyomingThe 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
pSOSpSOS 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
ARMARM 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...
,
MIPSMIPS 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...
,
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
, IA32 and
SPARCSPARC is a RISC instruction set architecture developed by Sun Microsystems and introduced in mid-1987....
.
In 2004, Wind River announced a partnership with
Red HatRed 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
RTLinuxRTLinux 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 FoleoThe 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
BMWBayerische 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
LinuxLinux 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 AllianceThe 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 DesignBerkeley 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/OSBSD/OS was a proprietary version of the BSD operating system developed by Berkeley Software Design, Inc. ....
operating system, plus involvement in the
FreeBSDFreeBSD 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 sourceThe 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
FreeBSDFreeBSD 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
LinuxLinux 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 sourceThe 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
PowerPCPowerPC is a RISC architecture created by the 1991 Apple–IBM–Motorola alliance, known as AIM...
,
ARMARM 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...
,
MIPSMIPS 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,
TriCoreTriCore™ 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
VxWorksVxWorks 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 :...
,
LinuxLinux 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
SimicsSimics 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 simulatorA 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
VirtutechVirtutech 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 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 , ....
, NorwayNorway , 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 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...
, AlbertaAlberta 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...
, CanadaCanada 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 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, 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 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...
, SwedenSweden , 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 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 StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
)
- 2008: MIZI (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 KoreaThe 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 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...
, OntarioOntario 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....
, CanadaCanada 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 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...
(StockholmStockholm 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...
, SwedenSweden , 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 AreaThe 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 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...