Platforms add multicore support

Wind River has announced its support for Freescale Semiconductor's new Multicore Communications Platform.

Building on a long-standing relationship between the two companies, Wind River was an early supporter of Freescale's popular MPC8641D multicore processor, and intends to support the MPC8572D multicore processor, which is sampling now.

Wind River will be supporting forthcoming products based on Freescale's new multicore processor roadmap.

Wind River is committed to delivering platform solutions for the next generation of processor innovation, uniquely offering designers access to integrated platform solutions based on either VxWorks or Wind River Linux operating systems.

Multicore solutions from Freescale and Wind River help remove the complexity associated with developing a software solution on a multicore silicon system while taking full advantage of the performance benefits of multicore hardware components, ultimately enabling customers to significantly reduce time to market.

By working closely with Freescale as it rolls out its Multicore Communications Platform to the industry, Wind River ensures that its shared customers benefit from the most optimal software and hardware environment and reduces the risk to developers of including this platform in their future development plans.

"Like Wind River, Freescale has allocated significant research and development into advanced multiprocessing architectures", says Jeff Timbs, Director of Marketing for Freescale's Networking Systems Division.

"We appreciate Wind River's solid support for our new platform and we look forward to working with the company to drive success for our shared customers".

Programming multicore processors adds a level of complexity that embedded software developers need to manage.

This complexity encompasses system design and development.

By providing a stable runtime software foundation for communications applications and a complete set of development tool capabilities - both extended to address the specific challenges of multicore device software development - Wind River platforms significantly reduce the scope and complexity of the development process.

Wind River offers a flexible choice of tools, run-time environments and interprocessor communication protocols and technologies for the development and optimisation of multicore and multiprocessing solutions.

Successful adoption of new silicon is often gated by the availability of required ecosystem components.

Wind River VxWorks and Linux operating systems are both already widely used today with Freescale silicon in communication applications.

By supporting Freescale's Multicore Communications Platform, Wind River will enable easy migration of software from today's leading communications products to future versions based on this innovative new hardware platform.

Similarly, by providing both an RTOS-based platform and a Linux-based platform, Wind River gives customers confidence and mitigates risk for their design as their multiprocessing requirements change over time.

"Wind River is the leading DSO vendor for multicore development because we offer customers the flexibility to optimise to their specific requirements for each device", says Tomas Evensen, Chief Technology Officer at Wind River.

"Applications today require more and more processing power within existing system power budgets - the combination of Freescale's Multicore Communications Platform with Wind River's complete end-to-end multicore solution puts the 'power' back in the hands of developers".

Wind River will continue to invest in adding capabilities specific to the needs of multicore device developers and will offer these capabilities to developers working with Freescale's Multicore Communications Platform as new processors are released.

Back to top