TimeSys today released the following statement challenging the accuracy of a recent announcement in which MontaVista claims to have released the “first Linux Trace Toolkit for PowerPC processors” . . .

TimeSys Challenges the Claim of “First Linux Trace Tool”
A competitor of TimeSys recently announced that they are “the first to deliver [the] Linux Trace Tool for PowerPC developers”. TimeSys would like to point out the following facts:

1. TimeSys has delivered to the market in May 2000, our TimeSys Linux/RT product that incorporates direct extensions to the Linux kernel that provides a strong platform for building hard real-time applications. This release included TimeTrace, a profiling environment for real-time Linux systems.

2. TimeTrace supports all hardware platforms including x86, PowerPC, ARM and MIPS.

3. In addition to showing context swaps, processor utilization and allocation information, TimeTrace also shows the system call activity using graphical icons, including any associated parameter information.

4. TimeTrace supports integrated, simultaneous distributed monitoring of multiple nodes, including heterogeneous operating systems and processor architectures; TimeTrace for other commercial operating systems (including those supporting PowerPC platforms) has been on the market for over two years and has been well deployed.

5. TimeTrace offers integration with TimeWiz, an integrated analysis and simulation environment for real-time systems. The integration of TimeTrace with TimeWiz allows for statistical and worst-case execution time data to be generated and exported to TimeWiz where extended simulations and worst-case analyses based upon Rate-Monotonic Analysis (RMA) can be performed. Developers will benefit by extended simulations and worst-case timing analysis performed via the integrated tools.

It is unfortunate that one competitor continues to confuse a growing market by making false claims. Tool support and real-time extensions to embedded Linux make it an attractive platform for developers tied to legacy platforms and tools, and it is in the best interest of embedded Linux users to know exactly what their options are so that they can make the right decision. Doing right by embedded Linux users is necessary to keep this space growing at its current high rate.

 
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