Warren Kurisu

Creating the Next Generation of Technology Leaders

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) just kicked off the 2009 FIRST Robotics Championship in Atlanta Georgia.  If you aren’t aware of what the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is, check out this cool video.  I first became aware of FRC when I was visiting a key customer and partner, National Instruments, who asked me if Wind River would be interested in partnering with them to sponsor the 2009 FRC.  Since this would consume time and energy and there was no direct business attached to the event, I was initially dubious.  But once I understood the positive impact of a “yes” decision, the decision was easy.

My decision was based on the FIRST’s charter, which is:

“Our mission is to inspire young people to be science and technology leaders, by engaging them in exciting mentor-based programs that build science, engineering and technology skills, that inspire innovation, and that foster well-rounded life capabilities including self-confidence, communication, and leadership.”

For years, since the tech meltdown, enrollment in engineering and computer science programs in the U.S. has been declining.  Apparently, the students believed that a career in investment banking and financial engineering would be more lucrative.  And it was.  For awhile.  A recent New York Times article entitled “Computer Science Programs Make a Comeback in Enrollment”, points out that we seem to be turning a corner in computer science enrollment.  I realized that contributing to FRC would help to turn around the declining interest in science and engineering.  This is ultimately why I said “yes”.   Not only would this be only good for our country, but would eventually be good for the embedded software industry as well.  For more detail about Wind River’s contribution to FRC, read this news release.

The computer powering the 2009 FRC robot kit is the National Instruments CompactRIO industrial control and data acquisition system.  The CompactRIO is based on VxWorks (as are other products from National Instruments).  Unlike the 8-bit controller of previous FRC competitions, the 32-bit CPU in the CompactRIO running the FRC robotic libraries on VxWorks delivers to the students a much more capable robot.  The mentor-led student teams are able to program the controller either through National Instruments’ LabVIEW or directly in C using the Eclipse-based Wind River Workbench development environment.  As it turns out, some teams used LabVIEW exclusively, some used Wind River Workbench, and some used both.  In any case, I’m pleased to see that the robots performed well through the regional competitions and now in the championships.

It makes me proud to see the success of these teams.  It also makes me proud to be part of Wind River.  Not only because of our support for FRC and FIRST’s mission, but also because this is yet another demonstration of how the VxWorks technology is being successfully applied in industrial applications.  I look forward to running into some of these young men and women in the future and hearing how FRC inspired them to be technology leaders.

BTW, I have two young sons, and recently purchased for them a LEGO MINDSTORMS, which allows children to build LEGO robots and program the motors, actuators, and sensors through LabVIEW.  Perhaps I’ll get them involved in a FIRST LEGO League competition, and eventually in an FRC event where I’ll help them build VxWorks applications.

Why Integrity Customers Get Free Support from Wind River

Previously, our CMO John Bruggeman blogged about the importance of Service and Support for Linux. He called it the killer app for Linux.

We recently announced our new VxWorks and Wind River Linux platforms, which integrate the Wind River Advanced Networking Technologies. This technology portfolio is a best-of-breed combination of technologies developed by Wind River and those acquired from Interpeak.  That is great news for VxWorks and Wind River Linux customers, but what about Interpeak customers using Integrity?

Well, it turns out Service and Support is the killer app for these customers as well. We went through great lengths to negotiate agreements that assure Integrity customers continue to receive service through their current channels. But we also beefed up our support programs to assure we could support customers directly when they came to us. In fact, our support teams stepped up with an offer of an additional 3 months of free service for Integrity customers who buy the Standard Support Service.

Why is that? Because, in our experience, customers are most comfortable getting support from the developers of the product. These customers can get direct support from the team who built the network stack from scratch. Also, this is OS agnostic technology, so if customers wish to migrate to Linux (or VxWorks for that matter) we have an integrated solution for them.

While in this release we are focusing on the middleware layer for both operating systems, we can’t forget about everything else that goes along with our platforms. Because in some cases, a little bit of killer app goes a long way.

VxWorks is helping make the world greener

One of my favorite sponsorship activities is the Challenge X competition, brought to us by our partner National Instruments (NI).

Seventeen teams were challenged to re-engineer a GM Equinox, a crossover sport utility vehicle to minimize energy consumption, emissions, and greenhouse gases while maintaining or exceeding the vehicle's utility and performance. Year 1 focused on modeling, simulation, and testing of the vehicle power-train and vehicle subsystems selected by each school. Years 2 and 3 allowed the teams to actually integrate their re-designed components into a GM Equinox.

NI donated several tools to the competition, including their CompactRIO programmable automation controllers, which feature VxWorks 6.x. These were used in development and deployment of the hybrid engine controls.

This year's competition was won by Mississippi State University.  According to the press release,  their design achieved a whopping 48% improvement over the production vehicle. You can find out more from the NI VI Roadshow blog, where there is some cool video of the cars in action.

Congratulations to all the participants and nice to know the next batch of embedded engineers are solving some important problems.

By the way, we co-sponsor the Embedded Technology Forum series with NI and SolidWorks in cities around the world. If you find yourself in Sunnyvale on Thursday June 14, this year's Bay Area session is hosted by NI's Founder and CEO, Dr. James Truchard. If you've never had a chance to hear Dr. T speak, you're in for a treat.

Real-time Reality

I love Mondays. Most people hate them but I've always loved them. My family has grown to accept this. My co-workers have learned to tolerate this (it's when I hold my staff meetings). On Monday mornings I'm energized from spending the weekend with my family, my mind is clear and I can look ahead to the week's challenges and figure out how to tackle them.

My job at Wind River is to run our VxWorks business so I get to think about the challenges and realities of the real-time embedded software market a lot. It was one Monday morning when I first learned about our interest to buy the real-time Linux intellectual property of a company called FSMLabs, whose specialty is adding real-time capabilities to Linux (read the acquisition announcement).

I'll be honest: my first reaction was concern about whether this would be bad for the VxWorks RTOS business.

But when I thought about what it means for Wind River, I liked the idea.

First, customers delineate their need for "soft" real-time and "hard" real-time for their system very precisely. In a nutshell, "soft" real-time systems have a requirement for a percent of processor resources within every time cycle. An application running in a "soft" real-time system has no sensitivity for how the resources are provided within that cycle. Failure to meet the requirement results in a degradation of service (some dropped calls or delays in responding to the user.) "Hard" real-time systems require a guaranteed response time even in the worst case scenario. Failure to meet the requirement results in system failure, sometimes catastrophic (like in airplane guidance systems or car braking systems, where VxWorks excels) and sometimes costly (like in metropolitan area-class IMS networking systems). There is always a continuum in requirements so your soft requirements are somebody else's hard requirements. For the gory detail, read our whitepaper on this topic.

Some customers moved to open source to get the benefits: the perception that it's "free", the wide developer base and the broad access to applications. At the same time they still needed real-time performance, and as Wind River expanded our real-time expertise into the Open Source space with Wind River Linux, the need for a hard real-time solution for Open Source became clear. The FSMLabs technology, RTCore, is the bridge between these two. It allows our customers to have a real choice for their soft and hard real-time Open Source environment. Granted this solution is proprietary, but it allows customers to innovate while protecting their IP. It also allows us to target areas where we have gaps. Paul Parkinson has addressed how hard real-time Linux could find applications for the A&D market .

We've also seen that customers who've dabbled in Open Source sometimes found the trade-offs too steep and have come back to VxWorks. The core strengths of VxWorks are well known: it's deterministic, reliable, low latency, high performance, scalable from a microkernel up to a full-featured standards-conformant OS and has great integration with real-time system development tools. Customers have already made deep commitments to VxWorks platforms and have millions of lines of code to leverage. Furthermore, many customers have certification requirements that only VxWorks can support. John Bruggeman has blogged about Wind River's commitment and continuing investment in VxWorks. VxWorks is a big business. And it continues to grow. Our existing customers understand this and know they can depend on the VxWorks platform to support their real-time product needs into the future.

Choice and flexibility are what our DSO solutions are all about. First, many customers have VxWorks requirements, but they also want real-time Linux. The addition of real-time-capable Linux allows us to offer customers the ability to choose which works better for them, to standardize under one set of tools and take advantage of our entire platforms across their business and across product generations. And as I see it this is only good news for the VxWorks: it expands our access to real-time customers overall and it makes it easier for customers to access VxWorks when the system requirements demand it.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts about the future of VxWorks. Most likely you'll hear back from me on a Monday morning.