Wind River announced plans to port its commercially supported Linux distribution to a dual-core, ARM11-based network processor from fabless chip-maker Mindspeed Technologies. Mindspeed's Comcerto 100 broadband processor clocks at 450MHz, and targets voice-enabled CPE (customer premises equipment) for SOHOs (small-office, home-offices) and SMBs (small-to medium-sized businesses).

Announced last June, the Comcerto 100 is based on dual ARM11 cores clocked at 450MHz. According to Mindspeed, the packet processor also integrates “a security engine, 64KB of on-chip memory, 128KB of L2 cache, a 64-bit-wide, 165MHz multi-layer interconnect bus, and built-in QoS and traffic-management capabilities.” Different configurations of the chip variously target VoIP, Fast Ethernet broadband routers, gigabit Ethernet broadband routers, and ATM routers.

Currently, the typical software configuration for the chip is to run the OpenWRT Linux distribution on one core, and MindSpeed's binary-licensed “media stream processor” executive on the other. The new Wind River port will give customers the option of instead using Wind River's “optimized platforms” on one or both cores, Mindspeed said. Wind River's official “Platform” products for Linux so far include:

• Platform for Network Equipment
• Platform for Consumer Electronics
• General Purpose Platform

Additionally, Wind River is currently at work building a new Wind River Platform for Infotainment product.

Wind River, which earlier this week announced strong first quarter earnings, is a member of MindSpeed's “OpenMind” third party developer ecosystem, along with LynuxWorks, Jungo, and Digium, and others.

Availability

Wind River Linux for Comcerto 100 will be generally available in the second half of 2008, say the companies. More information on the Comcerto 100 may be found here.

 
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