Wind River has acquired the tools division of a long-time partner. The embedded giant will pay Real-Time Innovations (RTI) $10 million for its ScopeTools business unit, including 11 employees and IP (intellectual property) rights to RTI's well-known ScopeTools. RTI will re-focus around data-distributing middleware.

ScopeTools comprises five tools for embedded development, including:

StethoScope — the original ScopeTool is a “real-time data monitor” that lets developers see variables and memory locations as applications run, with little impact on system performance. StethoScope first supported Linux in January of 2001.
• TraceScope — an execution-flow trace tool said to follow execution sequences, displaying function names, call parameters, and which tasks called the functions
• ProfileScope — a statistical profiler said to show where programs are spending time and how the processor executes programs, revealing the causes of poor system performance
• MemScope — an “instant memory analyzer” said to provide a live summary of each allocated block of memory that can display memory leaks before program crashes
• CoverageScope — a code coverage analysis tool said to show what code is executing

Wind River and competitor MontaVista both announced that they would integrate ScopeTools as Eclipse plugins for their WorkBench and DevRocket platforms, respectively, in March of 2004. RTI subsequently joined the Eclipse Foundation in May of that year. Wind River launched WorkBench in June, with ScopeTools support, while MontaVista shipped DevRocket with ScopeTools support in November, 2004.

According to Wind River's chief marketing officer, John Bruggeman, Wind River bought ScopeTools in order to ensure optimal support for the tools in the future. “It's an opportunity to even more tightly integrate and more directly influence the future of [ScopeTools],” Bruggeman said.

At the same time, Bruggeman says Wind River will honor existing ScopeTools licenses to other embedded tools vendors, including MontaVista. “We'd like to continue to provide these outstanding tools to others in this space. It will only help the embedded Linux market,” Bruggeman said.

RTI, meanwhile, will refocus around its data distributing middleware product, NDDS (network data distribution service), according to CEO Stan Schneider. Schneider said, “We divested our tools division to focus on building a platform around our publish-and-subscribe middleware.”

RTI's NDDS is useful in applications that require failover, Schneider says, especially in military/aerospace, transportation, and semiconductor markets. Schneider adds that NDDS runs on Linux and virtually every other embedded platform, since by design middleware has to “talk to a lot of different machines.”

RTI's deal with Wind River provides it with a license to use the tools it sold to Wind River, Schneider adds. RTI will have about 55 employees remaining, after the transition, and is hiring “aggressively,” according to Schneider.

 
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