Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
Q: What has Wind River been, and what is it becoming? Klein:We were closed and narrow in terms of our partnerships. We were taking a very adversarial approach toward Linux. We've turned 180 degrees. We're viewing Linux as incremental to our business. In set-top boxes, Linux is a great fit."
Posted May 12, 2005 18:06 UTC (Thu)
by QuisUtDeus (guest, #14854)
[Link] (5 responses)
Does that mean that before they viewed it as decremental to their business?
Posted May 12, 2005 19:31 UTC (Thu)
by ccyoung (guest, #16340)
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Posted May 12, 2005 19:48 UTC (Thu)
by josh_stern (guest, #4868)
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Posted May 12, 2005 21:13 UTC (Thu)
by sandy_pond (guest, #9734)
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Posted May 12, 2005 22:12 UTC (Thu)
by danieldk (subscriber, #27876)
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Posted May 13, 2005 2:28 UTC (Fri)
by njhurst (guest, #6022)
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Posted May 12, 2005 22:22 UTC (Thu)
by s_cargo (guest, #10473)
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Posted May 13, 2005 0:40 UTC (Fri)
by marduk (subscriber, #3831)
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Posted May 13, 2005 1:51 UTC (Fri)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
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Posted May 13, 2005 3:17 UTC (Fri)
by bajw (guest, #11712)
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Posted May 13, 2005 7:54 UTC (Fri)
by xoddam (subscriber, #2322)
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Posted May 13, 2005 17:39 UTC (Fri)
by error27 (subscriber, #8346)
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Posted May 13, 2005 9:55 UTC (Fri)
by simlo (guest, #10866)
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VxWorks is good for a small, well defined project where you can make an combined OS-application image and burn it into a flash or a prom and skip it with the device. But once you start to do more dynamic stuff like loading an application in the middle of it or just running a lot of different services it sucks compared to Linux. Also the hardware support for common devices lacks in vxWorks compared to Linux.
BUT Linux isn't deterministic real-time although Ingo is working hard on getting it detterministic. But Linux will not obtain the low interrupt and task latencies of vxWorks. Linux will probably get to 50-100 us whereas vxWorks is down to 1-10 us on a typical embedded target.
Posted May 28, 2005 21:48 UTC (Sat)
by roelofs (guest, #2599)
[Link]
That's for darned sure. Their USB stack blows, for example--things that Just Work on Linux (which is lots and lots of things) require weeks or months of support calls and workarounds with VxWorks.
But Linux will not obtain the low interrupt and task latencies of vxWorks. Linux will probably get to 50-100 us whereas vxWorks is down to 1-10 us on a typical embedded target.
It won't come close to hitting VxWorks' footprint, either. But that's OK--they're different OSes with different markets (i.e., target hardware). Wind River's problem is that the market for the minimalist hardware on which VxWorks shines is rapidly vanishing.
Greg
Posted May 14, 2005 9:59 UTC (Sat)
by bk (guest, #25617)
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Posted May 16, 2005 17:34 UTC (Mon)
by XERC (guest, #14626)
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So, "viewing Linux as incremental to our business" indicates that "We've turned 180 degrees"?Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
obviously a typo - probably meant to say something like instrumentalincremental change
>Does that mean that before they viewed it as decremental to their business?
Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
I think it does. As the article describes, Wind River has their own proprietary OS, VxWorks, and they viewed Linux as a competitor to that in the embedded space. Apparently they are doing okay selling, to some customers, a Linux distribution and tools/custom work for that instead of VxWorks itself.
These guys are the Microsoft of the embedded world. I still don't trust them.Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
Yes. They practically dumped Slackware Linux after acquiring BSDi. They were only interested in BSDi code.Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
I think they found it excremental to their business.Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
I liked this:
Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
And our customers have an aversion to putting Microsoft in their devices. Third, this market is about reliability. You can't do control-alt-delete on a pacemaker.
Can you 'init 0'?Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
I've used xvWorks and I'm not impressed. I sure hope no one ever uses it in a pacemaker.Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
I don't know, but would pretty confidently bet a nickle they have been finding Linux to be a significant upgrade from VxWorks, and market forces are making them convert to the better platform in order to remain competitive in their field. My guess is their old proprietary system has flatly been outperformed by Linux.Wind River's upgrade to Linux
> My guess is their old proprietary system has flatly been Wind River's upgrade to Linux
> outperformed by Linux.
Since Linux has never been explicitly designed nor optimised for the
kinds of devices VxWorks has, I doubt very much that's true. VxWorks
lacks many of the advances Linux has made in recent years -- but
I'd be surprised if VxWorks didn't beat recent Linux versions in
performance, and more importantly latency, on small single-processor
systems.
Actually it's probably more trouble than it's worth to build a Linux
2.6 kernel for a machine with less than several megabytes of RAM;
even if you could make it fit, you would do so by throwing away all
the lovely page tables and other spendthrift data structures which
have made Linux do so well on modern servers and PCs.
(Not having done this myself, I can't actually vouch for it.)
Page tables is such a bad example... Someday you will probably realise how funny your comment was. :PWind River's upgrade to Linux
It depends on whichs parts of VxWorks you use. If you use the core, i.e. the
scheduler, I would have no problems with it. It just _works_. If you start
to use all their add-ons: They are crap. The functionality is 95% there so
you think you can use it but once you have deployed your stuff the last 5% starts to hit you and give a lot of trouble.Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
Also the hardware support for common devices lacks in vxWorks compared to Linux.
Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
Well, NASA uses vxWorks in the Mars Rovers so *someone* is impressed enough by it's reliability.Wind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
Well, I know almost nothing about VxWorks, butWind River's Linux transformation (ZDNet)
I shure like to make their business bitterer by
posting the following link: SnapGear Embedded Linux Distribution
I haven't tried it yet, but it is supposed to compete
with
MontaVista's Linux and it's
FULLY GPL and free(+freely downloadable)