Announcing: Wind River Real-Time Core 5.0

In February 2007, Wind River announced the acquisition of FSMLabs RTCore technology along with our plans to offer the technology with Wind River Linux.  Our progress on integration and our satisfaction with the technology continues to grow, and I am happy to announce that Wind River Real-Time Core 5.0 [pdf document] for Wind River Linux 1.5 is now available. Real-Time Core Technology will enable existing Wind River Linux users to achieve guaranteed real-time response for their applications and more importantly the availability of Real-Time Core enables Linux to be deployed in devices previously restricted to using an RTOS.

The subject of real-time performance has come up in several occasions. In our initial benchmark efforts, Real-Time Core provides comparable performance to VxWorks and superior performance to the conditional real-time response provided by PREEMPT and the supporting real-time Linux kernel patches available today. Our intention in offering Wind River Real-Time Core is to expand the use of Linux in embedded applications and to offer Wind River users the broadest range of real-time choice with VxWorks, Wind River Linux with PREEMPT, and Wind River Real-Time Core each providing their own benefits and strengths. We welcome you to review these various offerings and send us questions and feedback.

VxWorks will continue to be the flagship of the Wind River portfolio offering the most consistent single-digit microsecond real-time response. In addition, VxWorks will continue to offer the highest levels of security and safety critical certifications available.  Wind River Linux will continue to provide conditional real-time response with PREEMPT for users who are excited about the benefits of open-source and can achieve their applications specific definition of ‘real-time’ using this technology. While, Wind River Real-Time Core will add guaranteed real-time response to Linux providing the best real-time response for single-processor devices, aerospace and defense applications, industrial equipment, and other precision application.

Choice and flexibility are the goals that drive our efforts to deliver multiple DSO solutions that address a variety of application requirements. And standardization and support are the keys that give people the confidence and trust in making those choices. We’d like to hear your thoughts about real-time applications and performance. We’ll let you know about benchmark information and best-practices guides in the future.