Product category:
Embedded Software and Operating Systems
News Release from: Wind River Systems | Subject: VSPWorks
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 22 March 2002
RTOS and development tools are dedicated
to DSP
VSPWorks is a complete development platform for developing applications powered by digital signal processors.
VSPWorks is a complete development platform for developing applications powered by digital signal processors The new platform from Wind River Systems provides the VSPWorks real-time operating system (RTOS) and GUI-driven development tools, optimised for creating applications with small memory footprint requirements using single or multiple DSPs, or a combination of DSP and CPU silicon
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 23 Oct 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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VSPWorks is well suited for developing applications that implement these scalable distributed computing models, and enables the programming of a multiprocessor or multicore system as if it were a single processor system through a unique virtual single processor (VSP) model.
"Our customers are increasingly building systems that implement multiple types of programmable silicon building blocks including CPUs, DSPs and FPGAs", said John Fogelin, chief technologist and vice president of Wind River's Platforms business unit.
"With the introduction of VSPWorks, developers are able to freely select the most suitable silicon combination for their application and then use the integrated tools, RTOS and virtual single processor model to develop their multicore application as if it were a single processor system.
By simplifying system design, manufacturers of these complex systems are able to shave considerable time off the development process".
VSPWorks is based on the "Virtuoso" technology acquired by Wind River last year from Eonic Systems.
Key technology components include a scalable, small- footprint kernel optimised for DSPs, advanced VSP architecture for multicore distributed applications, and tools to enable customers to rapidly design, debug, and deploy a variety of applications with processing-intensive requirements.
Developers are able to specify tasks and objects that may reside on any processor in the system, and VSPWorks handles all inter-processor communication.
Applications can also be reconfigured to run on new hardware with fewer or more processors without source code changes.
VxWorks integration enables customers to design systems combining CPUs and DSPs through a host server that enables processors to communicate with Wind River's VxWorks RTOS.
Customers are now able to leverage the extensive features and middleware provided by VxWorks (such as TCP/IP networking, graphics and file systems) on memory-constrained processors running VSPWorks.
VSPWorks provides a hardware abstraction layer that allows developers to port their application algorithms easily between processor architectures.
The consistent VSPWorks application programming interface (API) provides portability across a range of architectures and enables a migration route to faster or cheaper DSPs as they become available.
VSPWorks also gives the system designer full control over hardware, allowing the user to design truly deterministic, hard real-time applications - a crucial requirement for time-critical DSP systems.
Complex, algorithm-intensive aerospace and defence systems represent a key market opportunity for VSPWorks technology.
Applications that are well suited for its VSP programming model and lend themselves to distributed processing designs include radar, sonar, imaging, and satellite systems.
These applications typically require enormous amounts of processor power, requiring tens or even hundreds of processors.
Because such systems are very complex to program, VSPWorks' ability to handle all interprocessor communications is indispensable.
Similarly, the same virtues that make VSPWorks a good fit for many aerospace and defence-related applications also apply to voice, data, and video processing farms in telecommunications base station systems.
These large systems often rely on numerous DSPs to handle processing-intensive data encoding and decoding while a central CPU handles network traffic and overall system control.
Developers building these systems can now leverage VSPWorks technology to design the DSP-based system components alongside the proven reliability of VxWorks for CPU-based tasks and applications.
VSPWorks is currently available for Analog Devices Sharc, Hammerhead and ADSP-21020; Texas Instruments TMS320C6x and TMS320C4x families; Motorola PowerPC 74xx; Windows NT simulation.
Releases supporting StarCore, TigerSharc and Blackfin will soon be available.
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