RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Red Hat, Inc. today announced that eCos (embedded configurable operating system) is powering Brother International Corp.'s recently announced HL-2400CeN & HL-3400CN laser printers.

Targeted at deeply embedded applications (such as automotive controls, cell phones, digital cameras, pagers) with minimal resource footprint or strict real-time behavior requirements, eCos is the only open source Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) that is tightly integrated with industry-standard, commercially supported GNUPro developer tools. eCos is highly configurable, making it possible to create the extremely small footprint required by a new generation of post-PC devices with strict configuration and memory requirements.

“The continued adoption of eCos is further proof of Red Hat's success in bringing the power of an open source development model and industry leading support services to the post-PC embedded market,” said Michael Tiemann, CTO, Red Hat, Inc. “eCos provides manufacturers of post-PC devices with the flexibility and expertise required to bring embedded products to market in a cost-effective and timely manner.”

“We selected eCos for the new Brother HL-2400CeN & HL-3400CN laser printer family because of its open source licensing model and ITRON compatibility on multiple microprocessors. The portability and design of eCos make it easy to migrate applications created for the HL-2400CeN & HL-3400CN family to future platforms, regardless of our CPU choice,” said Jeff Sandler, Senior Product Manager, Printers, Brother International Corp.

“As Gold Partners, we also gained access to Red Hat's developer support services and engineering expertise, which greatly increased the performance of the HL-2400CeN & HL-3400CN laser printer family and provided timely solutions to problems we encountered during the critical hardware/software integration phase.”

An Embedded Linux Solution

The flexibility and configurability of eCos has made it not only the choice for implementing ITRON applications, but also an ultra-compact, real-time vehicle for embedded Linux programmers. Although eCos is not Embedded Linux, it can support EL/IX, an embedded Linux compatability layer for programmers that want to use the Linux API in devices that are too small for a full version of Linux. For more information about the EL/IX initiative, and how eCos and Linux fit in the spectrum of Post PC computing, visit sourceware.cygnus.com/elix.

The eCos Real-Time Operating System

Architected as an open source RTOS, eCos is highly customizable and adaptable, and can be easily configured with the aid of the eCos GUI configuration tool to meet exacting application-specific requirements. Since eCos is an open-source standard created by Red Hat, it inherently provides engineers with maximum control, flexibility and understanding, over all aspects of their embedded solution. Red Hat provides a full range of eCos Developer Kits, which are integrated with the latest releases of GNUPro, support programs, and custom engineering services.

eCos Availability

eCos is immediately and freely available as open source code from www.sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos. From this website, developers can download eCos implementations for the ARM, Hitachi SuperH, Intel x86, Matsushita AM3x, MIPS, PowerPC, and SPARC microprocessor families and specific support for the following derivatives: Cirrus Logic EP-72xx, Fujitsu MB868xx SPARClite, Matsushita MN10300/AM33, Motorola MPC8xx, Toshiba TX39 MIPS, Linux x86 Synthetic Target. In March the net release of eCos will be expanded with support for the following processors: ARM Thumb, Hitachi SH3, Intel StrongARM, Intel x86, and NEC VR4300.

 
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