(press release) — RockSolid Enterprises will demonstrate the first of its RockSolid Box line of Internet Access Devices (IADs) in Atlanta during the week of September 26 at the Networld+Interop / Linux Business Expo 2000 trade shows. (more…)

In this guest column, Lineo's Jeff Dionne demystifies the issues of real-time, and clarifies the distinctions between hard and soft real-time operating systems (RTOSes). Dionne writes . . . (more…)

How hard is real-time?

The idea and ideal of real-time has become very important to Linux developers. Linux has grown into a full-featured operating system, suitable for many embedded applications. One area that has received a great deal of attention is the potential for using Linux, RTLinux, and RTAI in mission critical applications. (more…)

Milestone #5 of Bayonne, the telephony server of the GNU project, has been released and is available from this ftp site. This new milestone offers support for both GNU/Linux and FreeBSD systems. Pre-build FreeBSD packages for Bayonne may be found this ftp… (more…)

If you want to use Linux as the basis of a real-time application, there are a great many options you can choose from in order to enhance the real-time responsiveness of Linux. Given the somewhat bewildering variety of alternatives, LinuxDevices.com has created the “Real-time Linux Quick Reference Guide”, which we hope will assist you in locating Linux-based solutions that match your system requirements. (more…)

One of the more confusing aspects of the open source phenomenon is the proliferation of different source code licensing schemes. If you are considering using software developed by others within your products, you'll probably want to have an intellectual property lawyer read the individual license agreements in detail and summarize your rights. (more…)

In this whitepaper, Michael Barr of Embedded Systems Programming provides an overview of the broad assortment of “open source” licenses (and nonlicenses) that are in use today, and sheds some light on their differences and subtleties. Barr discusses: proprietary software, shareware, free software, public domain software, GPL, LGPL, open source, and community source. (more…)

In this feature article, LinuxDevices.com's Rick Lehrbaum draws on inputs from seven “real-time experts” to put together a comprehensive definition of real-time, probe the issues associated with obtaining adequate real-time performance in Linux systems, and understand some of the alternative real-time Linux approaches. Lehrbaum writes . . . (more…)

Pittsburgh, PA — (press release) — TimeSys Corporation announces enhancements to its TimeSys Linux/RT operating system distribution that makes the Linux kernel preemptable. This new feature significantly enhances hard real-time responsiveness by minimizing waiting times for higher priority real-time tasks. (more…)

TimeSys has joined the chorus of responses to MontaVista Software's recent press release entitled “MontaVista First to Deliver Hard Real-Time Linux” [story]. Following is the text of the TimeSys statement . . . (more…)

During the course of the past week, there's been an increasingly lively discussion (and debate) about the real-time characteristics of Linux, and over which approach is best. As a result, questions like these are starting to become more and more common . . .

• What does “real-time” mean?
• Who (or what) needs real-time, anyhow?
• How much real-time is really needed?
• What are the… (more…)

Sunnyvale, CA — (press release) — MontaVista Software, Inc., developer of the Hard Hat Linux operating system for embedded applications today announced over $23 million in equity investments from a number of investors including WR Hambrecht + Co., RRE Ventures, US Venture Partners, and Alloy Ventures. (more…)

In this whitepaper, Marco Pantaleoni of Linuxcare Italia provides an overview of Etlinux, an embedded Linux distribution developed by the Italian company, PROSA (subsequently acquired by Linuxcare). Pantaleoni writes . . . (more…)

Embedded Systems

Many readers are most likely already familiar with Moore's law. In the 60's, Gordon Moore predicted that the level of integration of transistors on silicon wafers would double ever year. In other words, every year, the industry would be able to double the amount of transistors on a 1 cm chip with respect to the previous year — an exponential rate of growth. (more…)

NetMedia has announced “the world's smallest Ethernet webserver.” It's implemented as a tiny 1.1″ x 0.9″ PC board, and only requires the addition of +5V DC power and an Ethernet connector to function as a standalone webserver. Now, get this: the tiny plug-and-play webserver will be priced at just $39 for a single unit, $30 each for 100, $20 for 100,000 — and, it's just $12 each, if you happen to need a… (more…)