Enea is showcasing new off-the-shelf high-availability (HA) middleware targeting multiprocessor and distributed embedded systems in the telecom, automotive, industrial control, and medical instrumentation markets, at ESC this week in Boston. “Element” is available now for Enea's OSE RTOS (real-time operating system), and will ship next spring for embedded Linux, the company says.

Enea claims to be second to Wind River in the telecom OS market, and it has long offered high-availability middleware supporting both OSE and Linux in telecom applications. The new Element middleware offering broadens Enea's middleware market focus, while adding support for multiprocessor systems, including those with DSP cores.

What is Element?

According to Enea, Element aims to provide core services for synchronizing and establishing communications between applications spread across multiple operating systems and processors. One use case might be an existing single-processor embedded design moving to a multi-core architecture, with Linux running on the second processor.

Enea says Element's support for DSPs and network processors — as well as 32-bit CPUs — enables designers to use a common set of services with a single API to “partition, distribute, and manage applications spread across multiple processors, blades, and operating systems.”

Element also provides network supervision, fault management, and upgrade management services, Enea says, and can be used to dynamically monitor, repair, configure/provision, and upgrade distributed systems as they operate live in the field.

According to Enea, Element comprises:

• Core distributed services and event logging — Element's “LINK” communications subsystem provides device- and OS-independent services for processes to discover and communicate with other processes and services, advertise service availability, share information with other processes (publish/subscribe), and monitor other processes for readiness. LINK also provides event logging of slot/service availability, diagnostics, and critical networks events such as alarm conditions, all of which can also be obtained interactively through a Web interface.
• Fault management and in-service upgrades — Element's HAF (high-availability framework) provides monitoring, detection, recovery, and reporting for “all system resources,” Enea claims, along with active heartbeat monitoring and reactive error detection schemes at the system, slot, and application levels. The HAF can be used to perform in-service hardware and software upgrades with minimal disruption, the company says.
• Shelf management — In conjunction with shelf management controllers, can be used to detect, configure, and monitor individual slots, blades, and chassis, track revision numbers, and monitor key blade-level parameters like temperature, voltage and fan speed.
• Provisioning and SNMP monitoring services — For reliable, deterministic system configuration, network operation, and subscriber services provisioning, Enea says. Based on Polyhedra, Enea's relational DBMS, which the company says provides transactional, real-time, fault-tolerant storage for provisioning data, and arbitrates access among multiple users.

Enea CEO Johan Wall said, “Large telecom OEMs often dedicate entire departments to middleware development, and automotive and medical equipment OEMs are beginning to do the same. Element lets equipment manufacturers outsource this complex function, saving millions.”

Availability

Element is shipping for Enea's memory-protected OSE real-time operating system. Element for Linux is currently undergoing beta trials with selected customers, and will be generally available in Q1 2006, Enea says. Pricing ranges from $75,000 to $600,000, depending on the base configuration.

 
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