Product category:
PC-Compatible Boards and Assemblies
News Release from: SBS Technologies | Subject: Ready Driver
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 29 April 2003
Driver programme aids board
interoperability
Ready Driver is an SBS company-wide interoperability programme between SBS single board computers and I/O hardware.
Ready Driver is an SBS company-wide interoperability programme between SBS single board computers and I/O hardware The programme will provide SBS Technologies customers with the greatest ease in computing system integration
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 19 Aug 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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Ready Driver assures product compatibility, eliminates integration efforts, and offers the convenience of one-source support for SBS processor and I/O products.
The first phase of Ready Driver supports SBS single board computers and I/O interfaces running under the Wind River VxWorks operating system.
When the I/O driver and the board support package (BSP) on a processor lack common routines, the customer needs to port the I/O driver to be compatible with the single board computer's BSP before any useful work can be done.
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In the worst case, porting involves weeks to months of effort.
SBS' customers purchasing a Ready Driver single board computer and a Ready Driver I/O product are assured that no porting effort is needed.
Integration simply consists of booting the single board computer, then downloading the driver object.
No compiling is required.
"We applaud SBS' initiative on enhancing software and hardware integration for our customers", said Dave Scheaffer, Senior Director of the Alliance Group for Wind River.
Ready Driver defines a common set of routines that are exposed by the BSP and used by the I/O driver.
Forming the BSP abstraction layer, the routines allow the I/O driver to be written without knowledge of the specific BSP or underlying hardware on which it runs.
Different processor types and the endian method are also taken into account.
"VxWorks is the operating system of choice for a significant number of SBS customers", said Dave Greig, President and Chief Operating Officer of SBS Technologies.
"While the BSP written by VxWorks for single board computers has a well defined set of routines, there is no common set of routines defined to address the vast number of I/O interfaces on the market today.
By defining a common BSP, we eliminate the hassles that our customers face when porting I/O drivers.
SBS Ready Driver products work together out of the box, saving our customers valuable time and resources".
Products currently supported by Ready Driver for VxWorks comprise the SBS VG5, CM4, VG4, RL4 and CK3 single board computers as well as all SBS PCI to VMEbus adapters, PCI to PCIbus adapters, Fibre Channel HBAs, Gigabit Ethernet cards and the ABI-PMC2CC-2 card.
Non-SBS single board computers tested and validated to work with Ready Driver I/O products include the Generic pcPentium, Motorola MCP750, Radstone G4DSP and Synergy DSP-VSS4.
Future SBS single board computers and I/O products supporting VxWorks will support SBS Ready Driver abstraction routines.
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