Wind River Expands Hardware Assisted Tools Strategy, Supports MIPS, Hitachi, ARM Processor Families with Comprehensive, Fully-Integrated Tool Suite

Wind River Expands Hardware Assisted Tools Strategy, Supports MIPS, Hitachi, ARM Processor Families with Comprehensive, Fully-Integrated Tool Suite

Addition of Former EST Corporation Gives Developers Best-of-Class Tools, Independent of Operating System
 

ALAMEDA, Calif., July 12, 2000 - 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 tool suite - obtained through the acquisition of EST Corporation - will be available for microprocessors from MIPS Technologies, Inc., Hitachi Semiconductor, Inc. and ARM Limited.  As the first set of hardware bring-up products launched under the Wind River banner since the close of the EST acquisition, this move dramatically expands Wind River?s ability to meet customer hardware bring-up needs.

The addition of new microprocessor support is a new direction for this product family and in line with Wind River?s approach to provide operating systems and development tools for the widest range of microprocessors on the market. Wind River will continue EST?s strategy of offering these best-of-class tools to any developer using one of the supported microprocessors, including all the previously announced Motorola processors, regardless of which operating system is selected.

These products 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. Embedded developers now have a single, comprehensive source for hardware and software integration solutions across the industry?s most popular platforms.

?Wind River hardware assisted tools support now covers the majority of embedded processors,? said Jerry Fiddler, co-founder and chairman of Wind River. ?This move gives Wind River deep and broad exposure to the earliest stages of our customers? design cycles, and continues to strengthen the relationships with our semiconductor partners. The broad processor support for these types of tools is unprecedented in our market and gives us a great opportunity to think about the entire scope of our customers? needs.?

?Strong tools influence the selection of processors and processors are often the first part of an embedded system that a developer chooses,? said Peter Dawson, vice president and general manager of Wind River?s hardware/software integration business unit. ?This assures customers that the tools required to bring up hardware and meet time-to-market requirements are available when needed. Wind River?s aim is to provide full life-cycle development solutions, including strong hardware assisted tools, for all the major processor architectures.?

?This move gives developers seamlessly integrated technology from a single source, Wind River, including hardware assisted on-chip debug tools, debugging software, and single board computers with schematics and board-support packages,? Dawson added. ?In addition, Wind River?s best-of-class hardware assisted tools suite is independent of operating system selection to allow integration with proprietary and third party operating systems via an RTOS API. It truly is the best of both worlds from a customer perspective.?

Wind River?s hardware assisted tools suite 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.

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 processor families that will be supported by Wind River hardware assisted tools include:

MIPS Technologies processors - the MIPS 32 family (4Kc, 4Kp, 4Km) using the EJTAG 2.5 standard
Hitachi processors - the SH-4 processor family (SH7750, SH7751)
ARM processors - ARM 7 TDMI processors and derivatives including configurable systems on a chip, such as Triscend.

Additional processors within these families are also under development.

Availability
Products supporting the three new architectures will be available throughout the summer and fall of this year.

About Wind River
Wind River is a worldwide leader in embedded software. Wind River provides software development tools, real-time operating systems, and advanced connectivity for use in products throughout the Internet, telecommunications and data communications, digital imaging, digital consumer electronics, networking, medical, computer peripherals, automotive, industrial automation and control, and aerospace/defense markets. Wind River is how smart things think. Founded in 1983, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, California, with operations in fifteen countries worldwide.

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Wind River Systems, the Wind River Systems logo, Tornado, VxWorks, and WindLink are registered trademarks or trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc. Other names are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective companies or organizations.
 

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