Wind River (Alameda, Calif.) said its Multicore Processing (MCP) initiative aims to provide device manufacturers with the software solutions they need to build devices that can leverage the performance benefits of multi-core hardware components. Wind River said marketing the new strategy involves continued collaboration with companies such as ARM Holdings plc, Broadcom Corp. and Freescale Semiconductor Inc.

According to Wind River, today's advances in processor speed and traditional single-core processor designs have reached their limits, leading device manufacturers to pursue multi-core designs for additional performance improvements. But multiprocessing introduces increased levels of complexity, the company said, creating new obstacles for the semiconductor industry, including more complex software architecture models with inadequate development tools and lack of industry standards.

"One of the biggest obstacles to widespread multi-core technology adoption in the device industry is the lack of a software ecosystem that is optimized to support the advantages from this next generation of processors," said John Bruggeman, Wind River's chief marketing officer, in a statement. "Wind River is stepping up to address all of the complexities device manufacturers are now encountering in today's hyper-competitive environment, as they move to adopt this transformative technology. We are committed to leading standards bodies and providing standards-based technologies to ensure the choice, flexibly and ease-of-use that will ultimately enable the widespread adoption of multi-core."

Wind River's MCP initiative is made up of five components:

Standardization across the entire DSO life-cycle ensures that device manufacturers have flexibility and choice for their software platform needs, according to Wind River. The company claims to be the only company to have a board member on both the Multicore Association and Eclipse.org. Wind River also works with various other industry standards groups including the TIPC Consortium, OSDL Mobile Linux Initiative and Kernel.org, the company said.

Wind River said its Eclipse-based Workbench development suite provides advanced multi-core development and debugging capabilities while supporting both heterogeneous operating systems and/or heterogeneous processor architectures. Wind River's Workbench Diagnostics debugging tool is designed to pinpoint time consuming, extremely hard to find multiprocessing problems like race-conditions, the company said.

Wind River said it also provides a robust, flexible choice in operating environments supporting SMP, AMP and Virtualized Operating System options based upon both Linux and VxWorks. The company also collaborates with semiconductor vendors, including Broadcom and Freescale, on market-specific platforms to support the latest and most widely used architectures and processors, the company said, creating integrated reference designs, COTS boards, and board support packages for the emerging multi-core processors.