Wind River to Deliver Dramatic Advance in Operating System Technology; New Cirrus Platform Begins Beta Test With Over 100 Customers and Partners.

Business Editors, High-Tech Writers

ALAMEDA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2000

Wind River Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:WIND), a leading provider of software and services for smart devices in the Internet age, today announced plans for delivering breakthrough technology to help developers meet demanding reliability, availability, serviceability and security (RASS) requirements in embedded computers.

This innovative technology, embodied in Wind River's new development platform, code named "Cirrus", has begun its rollout with more than 100 customers and partners actively involved in the beta process.

The Cirrus platform meets the needs of embedded systems with demanding RASS requirements, including service-critical Internet infrastructure equipment and Internet appliances, mission-critical defense and aerospace systems, and life-critical medical products. Cirrus' technology enables 99.999% up time or High Availability (HA), a critical requirement for telecom and electronic service providers as well as manufacturers of smart devices.

The major innovation of Cirrus is a new operating system protection model called "Protection Domains". A fundamental improvement over traditional protection paradigms such as the process model, Cirrus delivers the benefits of application and kernel isolation without unnecessary complexity, increased overhead and rigid programming conventions. Protection Domains offers unparalleled flexibility to tune the protection boundaries within the application code for optimal reliability, availability, serviceability and security. Cirrus is the world's first commercial operating system based on the Protection Domain model.

"Cirrus is the outcome of more than 200 engineering years of research and development and hundreds of discussions with industry-leading manufacturers looking to push the envelope of modern technology," said John Fogelin, vice president and co-general manager of Wind River's Platforms business unit. "We took the time and effort to make a platform that was right for today's sophisticated products, and our beta customers have already responded strongly to the introduction of this technology."

Key attributes of Wind River's new Cirrus platform include:

-- Unparalleled developer control -- Cirrus introduces powerful new features
such as memory protection, resource management, system partitioning, and
resource reclamation, but still allows the developer to obtain similar
performance levels of a traditional real-time operating system (RTOS) and keep
control over how the application and OS interact. Developers can dial in the
amount of protection necessary, where they need it, and when they need it.

-- Leverages proven technology -- Cirrus retains and extends the well-known
VxWorks(R) RTOS Application Programming Interface (API) which protects existing
customer investments in application code. This move, together with tightly
integrated support for the Tornado(R) development tools, ensures that the
network of over 500 WindLink(TM) partners can be leveraged. (see attached
quotation sheet)

-- Enables re-programmable smart devices -- In the past, developers using an
RTOS built dedicated single-function products in which the software was fixed
at the time of deployment. The new Cirrus protection model, along with enhanced
linker/loader capabilities means it has never been easier to support
incremental, in-field service of products through programming updates even
after they have been deployed.

-- Accelerates Time to Market for HA designs Cirrus also includes a number of
features designed in close collaboration with the leading providers of highly
available Internet infrastructure equipment. This includes support for fault
tolerant distributed messaging, hardware hot swap, a fault detection and
recovery framework, and chassis support packages from the leading HA chassis
manufacturers. These features have traditionally been created as costly
proprietary extensions to a commercial RTOS such as the VxWorks RTOS. With
Cirrus, customers can focus on their own core competencies and improve their
time to market since the need to create and maintain these extensions is
eliminated.

"Digital information is moving into our lives at an accelerating rate, exemplified by the explosion of cell phones, web-based telephony, home networks, and Internet appliances. Accompanying this explosion is an absolute demand for ultra reliable operating systems offering unparalleled developer control and the ability to re-program, update, and adjust products in the field," said Jerry Fiddler, co-founder and chairman of Wind River. "Cirrus meets these needs head-on."

"Cirrus is based on elegant and innovative technology that leverages the more than twelve years of code integrity of the VxWorks RTOS while enhancing the memory and resource management within the kernel, but not at the expense of our customer's flexibility or performance requirements," continued Fogelin. "Because of the tremendous Wind River value chain, it was extremely important for us to leverage the proven successes of our product line, our services capabilities, and our unmatched partner community so that our customers can achieve demanding high availability requirements and still meet their market windows."

The first commercial version of Cirrus is scheduled to ship this fall. A diverse selection of Wind River optional products such as advance networking protocols and embedded visualization development tools will also be available for Cirrus.

About Wind River

Wind River, www.windriver.com, is a worldwide leader in embedded software. Wind River provides software development tools, real-time operating systems, and advanced connectivity for use in products throughout the Internet, telecommunications and data communications, digital imaging, digital consumer electronics, networking, medical, computer peripherals, automotive, industrial automation and control, and aerospace/defense markets. Wind River is how smart things think. Founded in 1983, Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, California, with operations in fifteen countries worldwide.

Wind River Systems, the Wind River Systems logo, Tornado, VxWorks, and WindLink are registered trademarks or trademarks of Wind River Systems, Inc. Other names are registered trademarks or trademarks of the respective companies or organizations.

Partner Quote Addendum

"Cirrus is a great solution for customers with demanding requirements in the area of Reliability, Availability, Serviceability and Security. With its powerful new technology combined with the already proven Wind River technology, Cirrus will better enable customers both to build highly available (HA) embedded products while maintaining a low cost of ownership. We anticipate Cirrus and its HA technology will be a powerful developer asset in building connected reprogrammable embedded systems." -- Torsten Ballentin, corporate director strategic marketing, Force Computers, Inc.

"Wind River's new Cirrus platform strikes an ideal balance between memory protection and the high performance levels associated with un-protected development platforms. GoAhead's high availability software will leverage and extend Cirrus' benefits by enabling manufacturers to develop robust systems that meet the stringent reliability and availability demands placed on them by their customers. We are delighted to be working with Wind River to help enable an entire generation of new, self-reliant devices built on this innovative technology." -- Ken Hosac, vice president of business development, GoAhead Software.

"We are pleased about the release of this new platform from Wind River. This new technology, which includes optimized code for Embedded Intel Architecture, will enable developers to add high reliability features to applied computing applications. The new platform takes full advantage of the features inherent in Intel's Embedded Intel Architecture product family." -- said Ton Steenman, director communications markets, Embedded Intel Architecture Division.

"We applaud Wind River's strategy of leveraging the proven strengths of its existing VxWorks RTOS and Tornado IDE while adding developer-controlled new features to create the Cirrus platform and delivering reliability, availability, serviceability and security. This will clearly help advance the state-of-the-art of embedded development." -- Jill Maurer, president, MicroEdge.

"With its new Cirrus platform, Wind River has added an important new technology to its portfolio of embedded products. Cirrus Protection Domains can improve the reliability of a system and when combined with MCG's high availability platforms, such as the CPX8000, it creates an ideal telecom solution that people can depend on every minute of every day." -- George Tyler, telecom marketing programs manager, Motorola Computer Group.

"Cirrus, with its Protection Domains, technology will become a powerful option for our customers that require improved reliability, availability, serviceability and security. Motorola's strong relationship with Wind River ensures that its latest software innovations take advantage of the advanced features of our microprocessors, such as our PowerPC microprocessors' sophisticated memory management capabilities." -- Phil Brownfield, technical marketing manager, Motorola Computer Group.

"Unlike other offerings, Wind River's new Cirrus platform strikes an ideal balance between safe, protected memory and high-performance unprotected access. RTI will fully support Cirrus across our entire product line, providing easy-to-use debugging and analysis with ScopeTools, real-time networking with NDDS, and intelligent control-systems development with ControlShell. Wind River is the only company with the extensive partner network to give embedded developers a complete value chain of powerful development products. The innovative Cirrus protected operating system and compatible partner products will enable an entire generation of new devices. We're excited to be a part of this innovative new technology." -- Stan Schneider, president and CEO, Real-Time Innovations (RTI).

"We are delighted that our own Rational Apex Embedded for Tornado will extend Cirrus' benefits by providing developers of large and complex Ada/C/C++ applications with a professional team-oriented development environment. We believe that together, Wind River and its partners will help enable an entire generation of new devices to be built on this innovative technology." -- John Lambert, vice president and general manager, Rational Software Developer Solutions Business Unit.

"We anticipate Cirrus and its ground-breaking High Availability technology will become a powerful option for building embedded devices that require reliability, availability, serviceability and security. Part of the reason Cirrus offers such tremendous value for customers is Wind River's strong relationships with top embedded hardware partners such as SBS Technologies Communications Group, which allow customers to take advantage of our latest innovations in PowerPC based single board computers for CompactPCI and advanced HA features such as host CPU failover based on SBS' Cascade(TM) High Availability system. Cirrus and the new technology it incorporates are further evidence of Wind River's strong leadership in embedded technology." -- Bret Farnum, president, SBS Technologies Communications Group.

"The strategy behind Cirrus will enable developers of service critical Internet infrastructure equipment and Internet appliances to meet exacting market windows without having to rely on time-intensive in-house proprietary solution with limited tools and support. Wind River's new protection model will clearly help advance the state-of-the-art of embedded development." -- David Noble, president, Spider Software.

"The Cirrus development platform directly addresses the needs of Wind River and Ziatech's common customers that are building High Availability communication equipment. These customers demand high levels of reliability, availability, serviceability and security (RASS). Our CompactPCI (R) hardware coupled with Wind River's software has consistently proven to be an effective combination in addressing these needs. With Cirrus technology, we now have an even more effective solution, and we're excited about working with Wind River to roll out this technology." -- Jim Medeiros, product marketing manager, Ziatech Corporation.