By John Keller
ALAMEDA, Calif. - Real-time software specialist Wind River Systems Inc. in Alameda, Calif., has acquired real-time Linux technology from Finite State Machine Labs Inc., (FSMLabs) in Socorro, N.M.
Wind River acquired from FSMLabs the intellectual property including patents, copyrights, trademarks, and associated product rights for RTLinux, a commercially available, patented, hard-real-time Linux software technology.
FSMLabs will continue to commercialize RTLinux software for enterprise applications under a grant of rights from Wind River.
Wind River now can offer three real-time solutions for its device customers: VxWorks, a deterministic real-time operating system (RTOS); RTLinux, which enables hard-real-time applications to operate while running standard Linux as a separate process; and a soft-real-time solution based on open-source patches to the standard Linux operating system, company officials say.
“For many of our Linux customers, hard-real-time functionality would extend the viability of Linux to a broader set of their device development projects that requires mission-critical performance,” says Vincent Rerolle, Wind River’s vice president of corporate development and strategy. “Based on Wind River’s hard-real-time expertise, RTLinux was a natural fit to complement our device software platform portfolio and extend the value of Wind River Linux.”
RTLinux technology enables hard-real-time response times for applications ranging from single-core feature phones, high-bandwidth IP communications, robotics, and industrial control. FSMLabs’s RTLinux includes a hard-real-time executive that coexists with the standard Linux kernel.
Together, they combine the hard-real-time capabilities necessary for high-performance responsiveness with the general-purpose capabilities of the Linux operating system for file-system management, networking, and other operating system functions.
Once available, the combination of RTLinux technology and Wind River’s Linux device software platforms will provide device manufacturers with technology for developing complex, next-generation Linux-based applications that require hard-real-time functionality, Wind River officials say.
For more information contact Wind River online at www.windriver.com, or FSMLabs at www.fsmlabs.com.
