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Moscow, Russia, Jamuary 2001 - RTSoft Inc.,
a leading provider of software development services, has announced
that it will introduce a completely new design concept of
Board Support Packages (BSP) and firmware support. |
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While new classes devices are coming almost
every day, at such markets like telecom, datacom, SOHO, set-top
boxes, manufacturers and OEM,s are struggling to provide adequate
software support. At a highly fragmented embedded software
market, for every board vendor it means a nightmare of releasing
different flavors of BSP's for every OS customer might want
to use. And programming technologies of BSP have taken its
roots in 70's and have not changed significantly since then. |
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The complex nature of modern chips involve more
firmware and software support, but at the same time provides
the ability to implement completely new approach to address
such requirements like modularity, interoperability, field-upgradeability
and high availability. |
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"Even a low-range processors have now enough
horse-power to run such complex operating systems like LINUX,
but at the firmware or BSP side we still see in most cases
a very primitive combination of boot code plus Serial and
Ethernet driver, compiled as a monolithic image for specific
OS. No reusable components, no interoperability, no modularity
- nothing. We have to change it completely to keep up with
market pace in 21th century.," said Alexander Kaliadin, business
development manager at RTSoft. |
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"Take a look at the PC world - on the same firmware
you can run from the shelf Windows, LINUX, MAC OS, Be and
other operating systems. No need for recompiling or programming,
just install and run. ," added Kaliadin. "I do not want to
see BIOS as an design to follow, but it illustrates the idea.
This is why COTS approach is so successful. Customers need
support for Hot-Swap, PnP and the right to choose an OS to
work with." |
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The new BSP concept is based on modular where
components including boot or initialization code, drivers,
protocol stacks, services are separate modules and can be
loaded and unloaded on running target. The OS abstraction
layer provides isolation from hardware and translation of
specific driver API providing maximum level interoperability.
Optional components like power management, Hot-Swap support,
command console can be added according to specifications.
All internal logic of managing components is implemented through
the set of API's exported by Service or Device Manager. The
whole concept is totally open to ensure maximum level of acceptance
through the industry. |
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"What we want to offer is not a complete specification
or actual design. Due to very complex nature of this problem,
it would be imprudent to expect such job to be done by single
company. First, we need to identify a problem, create some
sort of a working group, release draft specs, and only as
a second step start actual work on implementation. ," Kaliadin
said. "But here is a very important aspect which can not be
overlooked. To participate in such job means for hardware
or software vendor a necessity to dedicate resources and a
developer team for that purpose, which is virtually impossible
for most small and mid-size companies. It will compromise
company core business strategy and it certainly is not what
their CIO's want. Here is where RTSoft is totally different.
Our only goal is to help companies worldwide to solve their
local or global strategic problems regardless of their size
and complexity. And as "BSP" company, we have accumulated
tremendous experience with most OS's and hardware platforms,
and would like to offer such experience now not only for selected
clients but for all embedded and real-time society. This the
message we want to deliver. And we believe it is a right time
for it. We have seen some move in this direction during last
year with more or less success, but now is the right moment
to consolidate our efforts. Such concept could be interpreted
as to global and a bit unrealistic, but the embedded and real-time
market landscape is changing so rapidly, so we definitely
should aim above target to hit it. " |
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RTSoft provides custom software development,
including custom firmware, drivers, Board Support Packages
(BSPs), OS porting, protocol stacks and embedded applications,
for specific customer applications. RTSoft can provide support
based on a variety of real-time operating systems, including
VxWorks, OS9, and OSE, as well as proprietary RTOS support. |
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For additional information about support for
systems based on the MPC8260 and MPC8240 processors, or other
turnkey development solutions available from RTSoft, contact
RTSoft Inc.,
[105077, p/o box 158, Moscow, Russia].
Tel: +7-095-104-3914;
Fax: +7-095-742-6829;
e-mail: kaliadin@rtsoft.msk.ru.
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Copyright
2000 - 2004 © RTSoft |
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