GREEN HILLS SOFTWARE LAUNCHES 4.0 OF INTEGRITY REAL-TIME OS.

Green Hills Software recently launched version 4.0 of the INTEGRITY real-time operating system (RTOS).

The new RTOS, which now supports PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, and XScale processors, features full memory protection and guaranteed resource availability, yet still delivers sub-200-nsec interrupt response and sub-microsecond context switching (as measured on a 233-MHz processor). INTEGRITY 4.0 provides a powerful high-availability API, advanced multi-chassis, multitasking/multiprocessor debugging, and full kernel awareness. The new RTOS also features a new system resource analysis tool, an enhanced EventAnalyzer for real-time event trace, a new project configuration tool and extended I/O device and networking support.

INTEGRITY is a secure, fast, deterministic, real-time operating system optimized for embedded applications that place a premium on reliability, real-time performance, and testability. Utilizing a processor's memory management (MMU) facilities, INTEGRITY builds a firewall between the kernel and user tasks that prevents errant or malicious code from corrupting other user tasks or the kernel. INTEGRITY delivers maximum responsiveness and determinism by running with interrupts continuously enabled and guaranteeing access to the CPU and memory for critical tasks.

"We initially developed INTEGRITY for our customers in the aerospace and telecom industries who needed higher levels of safety, security, and reliability than was available in conventional off-the-shelf RTOSes," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "Today, it has grown into a full-featured RTOS environment for PowerPC, ARM, XScale and MIPS processors that combines our advanced ultra-secure kernel with comprehensive networking, file management and development tool support."

INTEGRITY's new graphical ResourceAnalyzer provides visibility into applications and the kernel as they execute on the target system. The ResourceAnalyzer displays CPU execution at the task and address space level, stack usage for tasks and memory use for address spaces. The host-based analyzer displays this information for a given point in time, or as a line graph, providing both a snapshot and historical view of CPU time and memory use.

INTEGRITY's enhanced real-time EventAnalyzer bolsters real-time visibility by enabling programmers to log and monitor system and application events in real time without disrupting program execution. Operating like a high-level logic analyzer, the EventAnalyzer displays all INTEGRITY context switches, API calls, interrupts and specified user events in a time-relative format using intuitive ICONs. The EventAnalyzer is tightly integrated with the MULTI debugger, and enables programmers to view the application source code for any event with a single button click in the EventAnalyzer GUI. It also provides enhanced triggering facilities that enable programmers to use MULTI's advanced tracepoint facility to enable/disable logging based on user-specified run-time conditions. The EventAnalyzer also features tighter integration with Rational's RoseRT, enabling programmers to view RoseRT state transitions alongside other INTEGRITY system or user-defined events.

To simplify the debugging of multiple programs running on multiple boards in a multiple-chassis system, INTEGRITY's new debug agent (IDB) enables the MULTI debugger to communicate with all INTEGRITY target boards using a single Ethernet connection from the host computer. MULTI talks directly from the host to one board in the system via Ethernet. The debug agent on this board then uses TCP/IP to communicate with other INTEGRITY debug agents, extending debugger visibility throughout the entire multi-processor system. INTEGRITY 4.0 supports intra-chassis communications via TCP/IP over VME and cPCI, as well as inter-chassis communications via Ethernet.

INTEGRITY's New Project Wizard (NPW), part of the MULTI IDE, makes it easy to define and create new INTEGRITY applications. The new wizard supplements MULTI's existing project wizard, which steps users through the entire process of defining new MULTI projects, establishing target debug connections, and exploring and selecting MULTI features specific to that project. Through the new INTEGRITY NPW, users can now select their target BSP, define the number of address spaces they need and specify desired shared libraries and dynamic load modules.

INTEGRITY 4.0 introduces a number of significant I/O, file system, and networking enhancements, including a fully featured OHCI/UHCI USB stack with associated mouse, keyboard, hub and audio drivers, as well as drivers for CompactPCI and VMEbus backplane communications (shared memory and TCP/IP), I2C and a variety of real-time clocks and timers. INTEGRITY also provides an easy-to-use API for accessing peripheral devices.

INTEGRITY 4.0 extends INTEGRITY's high-availability credentials by adding a high-availability package for Motorola's CPX8216 CompactPCI chassis. The new package supports hot swap for non-system-slot CPUs and board insert/extract notification. It also supports dynamic domain acquisition, dynamic PCI resource management and provides a robust set of high-availability and chassis-management APIs for application control.

INTEGRITY provides a full Network File System (NFS) client. It also provides a Unix Fast File System (FFS) implementation that supports hard disks (IDE and EIDE), CD-R and CD-RW drives, RAM disk, compact flash, and disk-on-a-chip, complete with APIs for POSIX, C++ iostreams and C standard I/O. Networking support includes a BSD TCP/IP stack, Gigabit Ethernet, and the full line of Trillium communications protocols, including SS7, ATM, ISDN, Frame Relay, MPLS, VoIP and 3G wireless. INTEGRITY also supports the full line of InterNiche and Allegro embedded Internet products, which make it easy to add Web connectivity and management to embedded systems.

Green Hills offers Board Support Packages for a wide variety of popular ARM, XScale, MIPS, and PowerPC boards, including those from Cirrus Logic, Sharp, Intel, IDT, Motorola, Synergy, Embedded Planet, Artysen and SBS. A Board Support Package Development Kit is available for users to port existing BSPs to their custom designs.

INTEGRITY 4.0 is available immediately. Pricing starts at $15,000 for a product development license.