Wind River First to Market with Hardware Assisted Tool Suite for Intel XScale Microarchitecture

Business Wire, Sept 25, 2000

Business Editors/Technology Writers

ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep. 25, 2000

Early Run Control Support, Hardware Reference Designs Give Internet

Access, Networking Developers Single Source for Full Lifecycle

Solutions

Wind River Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:WIND), a leading provider of software and services for smart devices in the Internet age, today announced that its hardware assisted debug tool suite will be the first to support the new Intel(R) XScale(TM) microarchitecture (See related Intel announcement, Intel Announces New Microarchitecture For Wireless And Internet Infrastructure Applications, Aug. 23, 2000.) Wind River has been working closely with Intel, prior to the release of the XScale microarchitecture, to define the processor's on-chip debug (OCD) interface. As a result, run control emulators, on-chip debuggers, and reference designs will be available for developers just weeks after XScale processors ship. These tools will allow developers in markets targeted by the XScale microarchitecture, including Internet access device and Internet infrastructure equipment, to get hardware up and running as fast as possible during the crucial, early phases of development.

Wind River's hardware assisted tools are designed to help embedded system developers bring up new hardware and debug applications during product development, and then to facilitate production and test of completed products. Providing best-of-class tool support for the Intel XScale processor family complements Wind River's platform support for this architecture, giving developers a single source for comprehensive hardware and software solutions.

"Having reliable, high quality development tools that complement a particular processor can influence a developer's chip selection, which is obviously something that is very important to us," said Wendy Vittori, general manager of Intel's I/O Products Division. "Wind River's tool solution for I/O processors with an Intel XScale microarchitecture core will help customers reduce the time it takes to get products to market."

"By working closely with Intel to develop the architecture's OCD interface, Wind River will be able to provide comprehensive debug capabilities used in the hardware bring-up, diagnostics, and device driver phase of development," said Peter Dawson, vice president and general manager of Wind River's Hardware Software Integration business unit. "This allows customers to move rapidly to the application development phase using Wind River's Tornado(R) development environment or other operating system-independent solutions. And because the tools come from Wind River, the only company to provide technology for every stage of embedded application development, developers have access to a variety of other Wind River and compatible WindLink(TM) partner technologies as well, reducing development time and effort even further."

Wind River's XScale debug solution includes hardware assisted, on-chip debug (OCD) tools: visionPROBE II and visionICE II; C/C software debuggers: visionCLICK for Windows and visionXD for Unix; a firmware developers kit: visionWARE; and single board computers with schematics and board support packages. Features include:

-- High Performance Download - With one of the fastest download speeds in the
industry, Wind River hardware assisted tools provide enhanced productivity for
software developers, for quicker time to market.

-- Fully-Integrated, Complete Solution - A fully-integrated tool suite
addresses the entire development cycle from board bring-up to debug and
production, and test. Having a complete solution from one company gives
developers a higher level of efficiency as compared to having to painstakingly
integrate tools from multiple vendors.

-- Comprehensive Feature Set - Features include RTOS awareness, built-in
hardware diagnostics, flash memory programming, internal register
configuration, and statistical performance analysis.

The suite is fully integrated with Wind River's Tornado environment such that Tornado can be used before the board support package (BSP) is developed or as a download / debug channel if no Ethernet or serial port is available on the target system. In addition, the tool suite is independent of operating system selection to allow integration with proprietary and third party operating systems via an RTOS API.

Building on Intel StrongARM(R) technology, the XScale microarchitecture combines very low power with high performance, making it well suited for portable and handheld devices where battery life is essential to reliable operation. The platform is also well equipped for Internet infrastructure products such as network and I/O processors, where performance is essential to processing large amounts of data quickly.

Availability

Wind River will first support the Intel XScale 80200 processor with its hardware assisted development tools. The visionPROBE II cable emulation system, bundled with the visionCLICK software debugger, will be available for this architecture in mid October. Hardware reference designs for XScale processors will be made available shortly thereafter in late October; visionICE II, the visionWARE firmware developer's kit and board support packages will follow in Q4, 2000.