Green Hills Software's Integrity real-time operating system unleashes the power of Intel network processors.

Green Hills Software Inc., the technology leader in real-time operating systems and embedded software development tools, has announced real-time operating systems (RTOS) support for the Intel IXP2400 and IXP2800 network processors and their development platforms. Software developers can now develop and deploy their network edge and core applications for the first time with a total solution based on a royalty-free, memory-protected RTOS integrated with the industry leading MULTI integrated development environment (IDE) and optimizing C/C++ compilers.

"Our customers value the power and programmability of the Intel IXP2400 and Intel IXP2800 network processors and appreciate a reliable development solution that unleashes the processors' superior design," said Doug Davis, general manager, Intel Network Processor Division. "It is good news that Green Hills Software's real-time operating system will now be available for our IXP2XXX customers."

INTEGRITY is optimized for Intel XScale technology and well suited for applications based on the Intel IXP2XXX network processors that require high performance, high reliability and a cost-effective business model.

INTEGRITY enhances reliability and determinism by never disabling interrupts during any system call while providing applications guaranteed access to the CPU and memory for critical tasks. INTEGRITY prevents errant or malicious code from corrupting user and kernel objects. Other RTOS solutions do not offer this protection or security, leaving systems vulnerable to failure from errant application code, viruses and hackers.

"Customers are adopting Green Hill Software's royalty-free solution for next generation networking products," said Dan Mender, INTEGRITY's director of business development at Green Hills Software. "We see this additional offering as a natural expansion of our total solution for the networking marketplace."

The Intel IXP2400 and Intel IXP2800 network processors are programmable network processors that integrate a high-performance parallel processing design on a single chip for processing complex algorithms, deep packet inspection, traffic management and forwarding at wire speed. The processors' store-and-forward architecture combines a high-performance Intel XScale core with 16 or eight (IXP2800 or IXP2400, respectively) 32-bit independent multi-threaded microengines that can cumulatively provide more than 23.1 giga-operations per second. The Intel IXDP2400 and Intel IXDP2800 Development Platforms provide a robust board-level development environment with dual network processor ingress/egress baseboards, PCI 2.2, UART serial port, 10/100 Ethernet MAC, JTAG port and Netcom connectors for the microengines.

INTEGRITY is part of a complete, highly integrated, single-source development solution for the entire application development project, from board bring-up, to product development and deployment, to in-field debugging and upgrades. The MULTI IDE includes a source-level debugger, program builder, profiler, run-time error checker, version control, memory leak detector and editor. Green Hills Software's C/C++/EC++ compilers are optimized for the Intel XScale core, ARMV5T Thumb instruction set and ARM V5E DSP extensions, thus continuing the tradition of producing the fastest and smallest code in the industry.

MULTI also features the 100 percent binary compatible INTEGRITY simulator (ISIM), which enables programmers to develop and test their target processor code on a PC or Unix workstation without Intel IXP2XXX network processor hardware and a real-time EventAnalyzer and ResourceAnalyzer, which give users a view of system and user events in a graphical display. The Green Hills Probe and SlingShot provide on-chip debugging and user run-control at download speeds of 450 KB/sec.

INTEGRITY for the Intel IXP2800 network processor and the current IXDP2800 Development Platform, MULTI and the Green Hills Probe are immediately available. INTEGRITY for the IXP2400 network processor will follow. Development licenses for the INTEGRITY RTOS starts at $15,000 per product. Run-time licenses for INTEGRITY on the target system are free. List pricing for MULTI starts at $5,900 and the Green Hills Probe starts at $3,000. Support for the new Intel IXDP2401 and IXDP2801 development platforms is expected early in 2004.