FSMLabs First to Market with OSDL Carrier Grade Linux 3.2; Carrier Grade RTLinux Meets New, More Demanding OSDL Specification and Excels with Hard Real-Time, SMP and Hot-Plug-Based CPU Reservation.

SOCORRO, N.M. -- FSMLabs (http://www.fsmlabs.com), a mission-critical software developer, announced immediate availability of a complete 64-bit Carrier Grade Linux distribution qualified under the recently published OSDL Carrier Grade Linux (CGL) 3.2 specification. The new specification is far more wide-ranging and rigorous than previous CGL specifications and goes further in meeting the emerging requirements of telecommunications and network equipment manufacturers. FSMLabs' "first to market" status underscores the rapid pace of the company's product rollout and development strategy. The 2.6 Linux kernel that FSMLabs delivers with the system is plug-in compatible with FSMLabs' RTCore hard real-time technology, offering single-digit microsecond responsiveness, seamlessly available to CGL customers.

Michel Ruffin, senior member of the Alcatel CTO office, noted, "FSMLabs' RTCore Enhanced Carrier Grade Linux is a long-awaited solution to the need to add real-time capabilities to Linux for the telecommunications industry." Manas Alekar, CGL project leader at FSMLabs Pune India Development Center, adds that "as soon as the 3.2 specification was released, FSMLabs began an incremental upgrade to our existing real-time CGL platform and started applying our industry-leading build and test system to rigorously qualify reliability and performance."

Carrier Grade RTLinux offers a rich capability set for communications equipment OEMs:

--Native support for 64-bit multi-core and multi-processing

--Real-time processor reservation

--Eclipse-based IDE

--Standards-based real-time threads programming capability

--Real-time Ethernet

--Migration tools for legacy OS platforms

--Full support for running Windows XP as a guest operating system

as well as the benefits of FSMLabs rigorous quality assurance.

Carrier Grade RTLinux provides a comprehensive solution for mission-critical control and communications projects. "FSMLabs' core business is to provide real-time functionality as an upgrade to any Linux or BSD distribution," said FSMLabs CEO Victor Yodaiken. "Today we are offering our customers the option of end-to-end complete solutions by adding Carrier Grade Linux and hardware platform qualification." FSMLabs customers include Alcatel, BBN, Harris, Pratt&Whitney, Samsung Heavy Industries, Infineon, DRDO (India), Beijing Northern Power, and Sandia National Labs.

Real-Time Performance Edge

FSMLabs' RTLinuxPro and RTCoreBSD meet requirements for low-latency hard real-time responsiveness without sensitivity to application load for a wide range of CPU clock rates. Worst case interrupt latencies range from under 2 microseconds on AMD Opteron processors to 20 microseconds on low-power 100Mhz ARM9 devices. These measurements are computed while the Linux or BSD guest operating systems are fully loaded and servicing heavy network traffic. By comparison, native Linux and BSD offer limited real-time performance, with response times for comparable operations measured in terms of milliseconds, not microseconds.

The RTCore dual kernel architecture enables developers of intelligent devices to build high-reliability systems and to support the ever-increasing software content on those devices. Application developers can take advantage of the RTLinux and RTCoreBSD models to use standard Linux and BSD applications and services in conjunction with POSIX 1003.13 real-time code that runs in the RTCore environment. All of the enhancements in functionality and reliability required for OSDL Carrier Grade Linux are transparently available to RTLinux developers. Additionally, RTCore provides supplementary Carrier Grade functionality not found in enterprise-derived and also embedded-type Carrier Grade Linux platforms. With FSMLabs Carrier Grade platforms, real-time code can migrate freely between execution on RTCore and Linux/BSD clients, giving customers a true OS choice.

About FSMLabs

FSMLabs provides hard real-time mission-critical solutions designed for reliability and simplicity of operation. FSMLabs was founded in 1998 and is privately held, with headquarters in New Mexico and sales and engineering staff worldwide. FSMLabs products include RTLinux, RTCoreBSD, Lnet real-time networking, PSDD protected memory real-time, VxIT legacy emulation, Carrier Grade Linux, RTCore Eclipse IDE and ControlsKit XML/RPC interface builder. For more information, visit www.fsmlabs.com or e-mail [e-mail].

RTLinux, RTCore, Lnet, PSDD, ControlsKit, and FSMLabs are registered trademarks of Finite State Machine Labs Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. OSDL is a trademark of Open Source Development Labs Inc. LSB is a trademark of the Free Standards Group. Opteron is a registered trademark of AMD Corp.

All other trademarks are the property of their respective organizations.