Linux To Play Broader Role In Embedded Systems

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April 09, 2001 (12:38 PM EDT)

Linux To Play Broader Role In Embedded Systems

Making their strongest bid yet for the embedded market, open-source vendors will unveil a host of software products at this week's Embedded Systems Conference.

Operating systems, development kits, and wireless protocol stacks designed for the embedded arena and aimed squarely at a broad array of microprocessors commonly used in that market are among the products scheduled to roll out in San Francisco.

That's considered a significant step for the open-source community, which until now has focused primarily on the desktop and on that market's high-performance microprocessors.

At the show, companies like Lineo Inc., Linden, Utah; LynuxWorks Inc., San Jose, Calif.; and MontaVista Software Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif.; will announce support for CPUs from Hitachi Ltd. (stock: HIT); MIPS Technologies Inc. (stock: MIPS); ARM; Intel Corp. (stock: INTC); Motorola Inc. (stock: MOT); and others.

"Companies like ours are realizing that if we want to be in consumer appliances and handheld PDAs, then we're going to have to support the architectures that are being developed for those markets," said Doug Agnew, a product manager for LynuxWorks. "That's what we'll all have to do to penetrate the embedded market."

The open-source migration to the embedded market has gained significant momentum. Even Wind River Systems Inc. (stock: WIND), which has long dominated the embedded market with proprietary operating systems, has moved toward the open-source camp.

The embedded software giant announced last week that it had acquired the software assets of Berkeley Software Design, which develops and markets the open-source BSD Unix-based operating system.

Similarly, OnCore Systems Corp. also announced a compatibility strategy for Wind River's VxWorks application developers. It allows the use of VxWorks applications in a mixed-OS environment that includes Linux and other OS platforms.
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