Wind River has updated its Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) stack, adding a 2.6.10 kernel, support for more AdvancedTCA platforms (including PowerPC), and official registration of compliance with the OSDL's CGL 2.0 specification. Additionally, it launched an engineering services practice around its CGL products, and has expanded its CGL-related partner ecosystem, it says.

Wind River's spate of CGL-related announcements was occasioned by this week's SuperComm trade show in Chicago, and closely resembles the raft of news generated by the embedded software powerhouse at its annual Developer's Conference in Orlando last week.

Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition, v1.1

Wind River once generated about half its revenues from telecommunications, but an industry-wide shift away from proprietary hardware and proprietary operating systems such as its VxWorks RTOS caught the company off guard in the early part of this decade. For the past year or so, Wind River has fought hard to regain its telecom OS marketshare by re-aligning itself behind open standards, including AdvancedTCA (ATCA), an open hardware specification, and Carrier Grade Linux.

Wind River's flagship telecom product is its Platform for Network Equipment (NE), an integrated OS, tools, and middleware stack aimed at TEMs (telecommunications equipment manufacturers) and NEPs (network equipment providers). NE was the first of Wind River's Platform products to gain a Linux option, with a preview release shipping this February to about 1,000 developer seats. Four months later, the company has enhanced its NE Platform in several key ways, aimed at increasing support for open standards, it says.

Version 1.1 of NE now includes the option of a kernel built from the mainstream 2.6 Linux tree (the available version is 2.6.10). And, version 1.1 has been formally registered as compliant with version 2.0 of the OSDL's CGL specification. Additionally, version 1.1 adds support for several COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) ATCA systems based on both Intel Architecture and PowerPC, Wind River says.

Other enhancements to NE aimed at increasing open standards support include support for POSIX CGL features, a messaging and clustering framework based on the open source TIPC (transparent inter-process communication) project, and the addition of more technology from the open source Eclipse project into Wind River's WorkBench tools suite.

Workbench, in particular, gives Wind River an edge over competing Carrier Grade Linux vendors, according to VP of Marketing John Bruggeman. “I state very confidently that WorkBench is the state-of-the-art tool for Linux right now. There's very strong customer feedback to that effect. [MontaVista's] DevRocket is based on CDT [the Eclipse C/C++ Development Tools], and Workbench is a level of sophistication above. It has a level of comprehensiveness that is greater.”

Bruggeman adds that Wind River's extensive service organization forms another point of strength for the global embedded company.

Network Equipment Services Practice

Wind River's worldwide service organization provides a growing share of its revenues, Bruggeman confirms, and the company today announced it would formalize its telecom-related service offerings with the launch of a Network Equipment Services Practice chartered to provide outsourcing and consulting services that include:

• Device design — includes system requirements development, hardware and software high-level architecture design, technology assessments, and partial and complete design outsourcing
• BSP and driver optimization — includes development and maintenance of Wind River-compliant Linux and VxWorks BSPs (board support packages) and customized drivers
• Legacy application and infrastructure migration — port to and validate legacy software systems with new platforms
• New technology integration — integrate new standards such as 802.11 (Wi-Fi) and 8902.16 (WiMAX) into customer's hardware platform of choice
• Linux migration — evaluate and recommend an effective porting strategy to migrate current applications to new platforms
• Real-time best practices

Partner Ecosystem

Platform for Network Equipment, Linux Edition includes standards-based support for a range of IP networking, storage, security, and device management features. However, Wind River says it has partnered with third parties on additional areas of technology, such as layer 2 and 3 switching and routing, voice and signaling, high availability, and databases.

Partnerships and endorsements to be highlighted at SuperComm include:

• Solid Technologies and Wind River have collaborated on a hardware/software reference design for Voice-over-IP (VoIP) infrastructure equipment based on ATCA and Wind River Linux, along with GoAhead high availability middleware and Solid high availability databases
• Tellabs, which Wind River describes as “the market leader in telecom equipment for service providers,” has chosen the Linux Edition of Wind River Platform for Network Equipment for its Linux-based products, and will also retain Wind River's professional services team
• Artesyn has endorsed Wind River's Carrier Grade Linux offering for its KatanaQp ATCA blades

Bruggeman said, “We're seeing a major up-leveling of investments in open source technologies. We have many new customers. What we're seeing is not just programs or projects being done, but a move from project level into enterprise-wide adoption. Carrier Grade Linux continues to have very strong adoption.”

 
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