Wind River is expanding its On-Board Program, which provides board vendors with the Linux and VxWorks software tools, documentation, and training they need to develop, test, and validate Embedded Development Kits. The more-diversified program now lets vendors bring Wind River Test Management-based BSP validation in-house, among other benefits, says the Intel subsidiary.

In September, Wind River announced a series of Wind River Linux-ready Embedded Development Kits developed in partnership with eight embedded board vendors. Available then were Linux-ready kits from Emerson Network Power (the Intel Core i7-based MATXM-CORE-411B, pictured farther below), Kontron, and Eurotech, which is offering both the Atom-based Catalyst LP and earlier Catalyst FX board (pictured at right).

More kits were said to be due in the fourth quarter from Advantech, Adlink, Curtiss-Wright, GE Intelligent Platforms, and RadiSys, although some of these have slipped. Now, Wind River says kits are available from Adlink, Advantech, and Intel, with more kits said to be coming later this year from Curtiss-Wright, GE, and RadiSys.

As defined in December, the Wind River On-Board Program offered boards with optimized 30-day trial versions of Wind River Linux or VxWorks, as well as related development tools. Each kit was said to include a startup guide and tutorials, as well as a bootable USB flash drive that turns a host computer into a fully integrated development environment (IDE).

The kits are optimized for developing, running, debugging, and prototyping embedded software for each board using Wind River Workbench. Kit-dependent options include trial versions of Wind River Hypervisor and Wind River Tilcon Graphics Suite. Now, Wind River has added new features including its Wind River Test Management validation system, and farmed the whole thing out to participating vendors.

By freeing up the Wind River On-Board Program and letting vendors take control of the automated BSP (board support package) validation suite, says Wind River, it's allowing partners to create their own unique Embedded Development Kits based on customers' schedules and requirements more quickly. Vendors can thereby provide a larger variety of kits "with assured tight integration with Wind River run-time and tools technologies," says the company.

Emerson Network Power's MATXM-CORE-411B

The following updated features are said to describe the Embedded Development Kits:

• Wind River will provide training and support to enable each board partner to create its own unique kits.
• During creation stages, board partners will utilize Wind River BSP test suites using Wind River Test Management to validate the quality of the partner's BSP.
• All test suites are fully automated and include comprehensive BSP testing, running code through quality assurance scripts, confirming accuracy and uncovering potential bugs.
• When testing is complete, a report is generated providing a detailed description of each passed and failed component of the BSP.
• Once the kit passes testing, Wind River will review the test results and approve the software, making the kit ready for inclusion with the partner's development board.

Stated Barry Mainz, chief operating officer at Wind River, "Our ecosystem of board partners can now leverage our software, automated testing, tools and BSP validation methods to create exponentially more Embedded Development Kits, in turn controlling their costs and diminishing their customers' development risks while still maintaining supreme reliability and high quality."

Stated Arlen Nipper, chief technology officer of Eurotech in North America, "Using the Embedded Development Kits have proved instrumental in securing a number of important design wins in the past six months. Customers have reacted positively to the outstanding out-of-the-box experience."

Availability

The expanded Wind River On-Board Program is now available to interested COTS board vendors, says Wind River. Wind River Embedded Development Kits are available from Adlink, Advantech, Emerson, Eurotech, Intel and Kontron, and additional kits should arrive from Curtiss-Wright, GE, RadiSys and other vendors later in 2011, says the company.

Embedded Development Kits from Adlink, Emerson, Eurotech, and Kontron will be demonstrated today at Embedded World 2011 at the Wind River booth in Hall 11, booth #11-118.

More information may be found at the Wind River Embedded Development Kits page .

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