The platform will provide an off-the-shelf solution for embedded-systems designers who need bug-free software and absolute predictability in the performance of their operating systems, the company said. It also marks yet another effort by Wind River to section off a piece of the embedded market and create customized tools for it.

Known as Tornado for Safety Critical Systems, the new integrated development environment (IDE) is expected to offer an alternative for developers who have up to now written their own operating systems. "There's mostly been a 'roll-your-own' mentality in this segment of the embedded market," said Steve Blackman, director of business development and marketing for the Aerospace and Defense Business Unit of Wind River Systems, based in Alameda, Calif. "But the trend will be for more industries to head down the safety-critical path, and this will cover their needs and give them an off-the-shelf option."

The software platform grew out of a joint effort among Ada Core Technologies (New York), Smiths Aerospace (London) and Wind River on the development of a commercial off-the-shelf software solution for the Aeronautical Radio Inc. 653 avionics software standard. This ARINC 653 solution is now being applied in two ongoing projects: the Boeing C-130 Avionics Modernization Program and the Boeing 767 Tanker Transport.

Convenient partitioning

Wind River's Tornado for Safety Critical Systems, to be released to beta customers in August, combines the company's VxWorks AE653 real-time operating system (RTOS) with the Tornado III IDE and additional safety-critical features. The system is said to be characterized by partitioning that enables users to run standard VxWorks applications separately from VxWorks AE653 applications on the same computer. Thanks to this partitioning, engineers can run multiple applications and even change them without system-wide reverification, saving development time and cost.

"To go through all of the safety and validation testing can be very expensive," Blackman said. "But this [solution] enables developers to partition the applications in a computer, so that they can have safety-critical applications running next to nonsafety applications. And because it's partitioned, the engineer just has to test and verify the safety-critical application, rather than reverifying the whole system."

Such partitioning also enables engineers to place more applications on a computer, reducing the number of on-board computers and lowering the overall system weight, which is considered key in aircraft design, Blackman said.

Wind River expects the software platform to serve in such products as avionics systems, cardiac monitors, blood analyzers, nuclear power plant controllers and civil defense systems, among other applications.

Analysts saw the introduction as part of an effort by Wind River to slice the embedded market into a series of vertical segments and then offer customized products for each. Wind River currently targets five main vertical markets: network infrastructure, digital consumer, automotive, industrial and aerospace/defense. The company links those five markets with its Tornado IDE, which includes Tornado for Managed Switches, Tornado for Home Gateways, Tornado for Industrial Automation and Tornado for Car Infotainment, among others.

Analysts said that Wind River's effort is essentially no different than those launched by makers of other commodity items, such as Q-Tips, Kleenex and premium beers.

"The embedded RTOS market is becoming a commoditized space," noted Jerry Krasner, vice president of market intelligence for Embedded Forecasters Group. "So what do you do with a commodity? You either make money by sheer volume or you reposition the product to address specific growing markets. Wind River is doing it with a proactive approach of repositioning its products."

Krasner added that such efforts also serve to fend off efforts from Linux in the safety-critical market. "The rise in importance in safety-critical systems is nipping real-time Linux in the bud," Krasner said. "Developers of safety-critical systems want to have the confidence that they've used the operating system before, and that when they use it again, nothing will go wrong."