Green Hills Software Announces INTEGRITY Real-Time Operating System For IBM PowerPC 4xx Embedded Processors.

Business Editors and High-Tech Writers

Embedded Systems Conference, Booth #100

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 3, 2002

Royalty-Free RTOS Protects Kernel and Applications From Errant

Code, Viruses and Hackers

Green Hills Software today announced the availability of its INTEGRITY(TM) 4.0 real-time operating system for the IBM PowerPC(TM) family of embedded processors, including the 405GP and 440GP.

INTEGRITY features full memory and application protection and guaranteed resource availability for critical tasks. Yet, it still delivers an industry-best interrupt latency of less than 200 nsec and a context switching speed of less than 1 microsecond. This combination of security and fast, predictable response makes the royalty-free INTEGRITY RTOS the ideal target environment for PowerPC-based networked, consumer electronics products.

Unlike most competitive RTOSs, INTEGRITY utilizes the memory management unit provided on the IBM PowerPC 405GP and 440GP to prevent user tasks from inadvertently or maliciously accessing each other and the kernel. This approach makes it easier to contain and isolate bugs, greatly simplifying development and enhancing reliability. With INTEGRITY, a bug in one task cannot corrupt other tasks or crash the kernel.

"INTEGRITY's memory protected architecture, guaranteed resource availability and fast, deterministic, hard real-time response make it the most secure and reliable RTOS on the market today, and the only royalty-free, memory-protected commercial RTOS," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "Now, IBM PowerPC designers who already enjoy the productivity and code optimization benefits of our MULTI(R) Integrated Development Environment (IDE) can deploy PowerPC applications on the industry's most reliable RTOS, with full I/O, networking, and debug support, without paying royalties."

"INTEGRITY's I/O, networking and configuration features help simplify system architecture, integration and deployment," said Ricardo Gariazzo, PowerPC enablement manager, IBM Microelectronics. "These features, together with INTEGRITY's debug facilities, the MULTI development environment, and royalty-free pricing, help IBM PowerPC developers meet time-to-market pressures and reduce per-unit cost."

"INTEGRITY gives our EP405 and EP405PC customers a complete, out-of-the-box solution for building low-cost, high-performance products," said Mark Lowdermilk, CEO of Embedded Planet. "This solution, including the hardware, RTOS, development tools, and drivers for USB, PCI, ISA, serial, Ethernet and I2C, greatly reduces time to market for our customers. We look forward to offering our future EP440 customers the same benefits."

INTEGRITY is a fast, deterministic, RTOS designed for applications that require high reliability, availability, security and a cost-effective business model. Utilizing the hardware memory protection facilities of the PowerPC's MMU, INTEGRITY builds a firewall between the kernel and user tasks that prevents errant or malicious tasks from corrupting user data, the kernel, interprocess communications, device drivers and other user tasks. INTEGRITY also enhances reliability and determinism by running with interrupts continuously enabled and guaranteeing access to the CPU and memory for critical tasks. Other RTOS solutions do not offer this protection or security, and hence leave systems vulnerable to failure from errant application, viruses, and hackers.

INTEGRITY provides comprehensive I/O and file system support, including a USB stack, NFS client, and drivers for I2C, CompactPCI/VMEbus backplanes, clocks, timers, standard PC peripherals, and a full-featured, UNIX-compatible, hierarchical file system and a POSIX API. Networking support includes a TCP/IP stack, 10/100 and Gigabit Ethernet drivers, the full line of Trillium communications protocols, including SS7, ATM, ISDN, Frame Relay, MPLS, VoIP, and 3G wireless, along with adaptation layers for both Rational Rose RealTime and I-Logix Rhapsody modeling tools. INTEGRITY also supports the full line of embedded Internet software products and applications, which make it easy to add web connectivity and management to your embedded systems.

INTEGRITY's graphical resource analyzer greatly enhances visibility into applications and the kernel as they execute on the target system, displaying CPU execution at the task and address space level, stack usage for tasks, and memory use for address spaces. INTEGRITY's real-time EventAnalyzer(TM) further enhances 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, and interrupts in a time-relative manner using intuitive ICONs. The EventAnalyzer is also tightly integrated with Rational's RoseRT, enabling programmers to view RoseRT state transitions and INTEGRITY events.

INTEGRITY is seamlessly integrated with Green Hills' MULTI IDE. Together with Green Hills' family of optimizing C, C++, and EC++, compilers, MULTI automates all aspects of embedded software development for IBM PowerPC processors, including editing, source-level debugging, program building, run-time error checking, version control, and code/performance optimization. MULTI also features ISIM, an INTEGRITY simulator that enables programmers to develop and test their code on a PC or workstation without the need for target hardware.

INTEGRITY is available in July 2002 for the 405 and 440 cores and works out of the box with a variety of popular IBM PowerPC-based evaluation boards, including Embedded Planet's EP405 board. Green Hills also offers a porting kit and turnkey porting services for designers who want to port INTEGRITY to other platforms.

Development licenses for the INTEGRITY RTOS, including a board support package, start at $ 15,000 per product. Run-time licenses for INTEGRITY on the target system are free.

More on Green Hills Software Inc.

Founded in 1982, Green Hills Software Inc. is the technology leader for real-time operating systems and software development tools for embedded systems. Green Hills Software's royalty-free INTEGRITY(TM) and ThreadX(R) real-time operating systems, fully integrated with its market leading compilers and MULTI(R) Integrated Development Environment, provide a total development and run-time solution that addresses both deeply embedded and maximum-reliability applications.

Green Hills Software has headquarters in Santa Barbara, Calif., with European headquarters in the United Kingdom. For more information on Green Hills Software products, call 805/965-6044, e-mail [e-mail] or visit us on the Web at www.ghs.com.

Green Hills Software, the Green Hills Software logo, and MULTI are registered trademarks, and INTEGRITY, Green HIlls Probe, EventAnalyzer and Integrate are trademarks of Green Hills Software Inc.

All other trademarks, registered or otherwise, are the property of their respective companies.