OMG Announces CORBA/e Middleware Specification for Distributed Real-time & Embedded Systems

Business Wire, June 5, 2006

NEEDHAM, Mass. -- First two adopted profiles, CORBA/e Compact Profile and CORBA/e Micro Profile, target resource-constrained embedded systems

The Object Management Group(TM) (OMG(TM)), today announced the adoption of CORBA/e (CORBA(R) for embedded) as a standard. Drawing on more than 16 years of experience with the CORBA middleware, OMG has designed CORBA/e to have the best of both worlds: dramatically minimizing the footprint and overhead of typical middleware, while retaining the core elements of interoperability and real-time computing that support optimized distributed systems. Also announced today are the first two CORBA/e profiles, CORBA/e Compact and CORBA/e Micro Profile. Tailored separately for minimal and single-chip environments, the Compact Profile and the Micro Profile bring industry-standard interoperability and real-time predictable behavior to Distributed Real-time and Embedded (DRE) computing.

CORBA is a mature, standard middleware that combines the interoperability, deterministic execution, and absolute dependability required by distributed embedded systems. CORBA standardizes the interoperability, and Real-time CORBA defines the deterministic execution platform that these systems need, but the full versions of these specifications were designed for a resource-rich, dynamic environment. To adapt these specifications to the resource-constrained, static embedded environment, OMG developed CORBA/e. CORBA/e sheds the dynamic and high-resource aspects of CORBA (such as the Dynamic Invocation Interface, Interface Repository, and Components) while retaining full interoperability and (for the Compact Profile) the real-time infrastructure including static scheduling.

"Constrained by memory limitations, performance requirements, and physical and cost considerations, each embedded system design requires a middleware platform tailored precisely to its needs - unused features occupy precious memory space, while missing capabilities must be tacked on," said Dr. Richard Soley, chairman & CEO, OMG. "By providing a family of CORBA/e profiles, OMG lets embedded-system designers select the one with exactly the capabilities they need in a middleware platform, without burdening them with features they don't need."

"For more than a decade, IONA has been a leader in the CORBA market and we view the introduction of CORBA/e as a significant milestone in the evolution of this important industry standard," said Neil Kenealy, senior product manager, IONA. "For our customers that want to extend their existing enterprise CORBA systems to take advantage of new embedded applications, CORBA/e offers the benefit of seamless integration, helping them to achieve a greater return on their CORBA investments."

"CORBA/e allows developers to achieve the ultra-fast performance required for distributed real-time and embedded applications. From resource-constrained devices requiring small footprints to large-scale systems in military/aerospace, telecommunications, industrial process control, robotics and more, CORBA/e is designed to meet even the most demanding requirements of performance-based embedded applications without forfeiting the interoperability, portability, and platform independence that CORBA has built its reputation on," said Joe Jacob, senior vice president, Objective Interface Systems, Inc. "As editor of the CORBA/e standard, we have been privileged to be involved in an open standard that represents the next generation of CORBA."

"PrismTech applauds the OMG's CORBA/e initiative, with its support for multiple embedded profiles such as the Micro and Compact profiles and with the ability to add additional domain specific profiles as CORBA/e evolves in the future. We believe that CORBA/e ORBs will be accepted as the key middleware technology even in the most resource constrained embedded systems such as those found in DSP and micro-controller environments," said Keith Steele, CEO, PrismTech.

CORBA/e Compact Profile

CORBA/e Compact Profile merges key features of standard CORBA suitable for resource-constrained static systems (no DII, DSI, Interface Repository, or Component support) and Real-time CORBA into a powerful yet compact middleware package that interoperates with other CORBA clients and servers of every scale, executes with the deterministic characteristics required of a true real-time platform, and leverages the knowledge and skills of your existing development team through its mature industry-standard architecture.

CORBA/e Micro Profile

The CORBA/e Micro Profile shrinks the footprint even more, small enough to fit low-powered microprocessors or digital signal processors (DSPs). This profile further eliminates the Valuetype, the Any type, most of the POA options preserved in the Compact Profile, and all of the Real-time functions excepting only the Mutex interface. In exchange for these limitations, the profile defines a CORBA executable that vendors have fit into only tens of kilobytes - small enough to fit onto a high-end DSP or microprocessor on a hand-held device.