Santa Barbara, CA. August 23, 2000 - Green Hills Software today announced that its MULTI® 2000 Integrated Development Environment has been selected by Mercury Marine Inc. to produce software that controls most of the propulsion functions on Mercury Marine's entire line of outboard marine engines. Application software developed using MULTI will run on a 40-MHz Motorola MPC555 microcontroller under a proprietary real-time operating system.

"We are extremely pleased to have been selected by Mercury Marine to develop the embedded software for their new OptiMax outboard motors," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "The MULTI 2000 IDE and optimizing compilers are ideal for developing fast, compact code that takes full advantage of advanced microcontrollers like the MPC555. The MULTI/MPC555 tandem has certainly paid off with a history-making performance at one of the toughest speedboat race events in the world."

The Mercury Marine OptiMax is a low-emissions, direct injection outboard speedboat engine. OptiMax-powered boats blew away the competition at the "24 Hours of Rouen" endurance race in France, placing first, second and fourth.

OptiMax represents a breakthrough in direct fuel injection technology, setting new standards for emissions control, fuel efficiency, and running quality. At the heart of OptiMax is its ability to deliver a highly precise amount of fuel and air directly to the cylinder just before ignition. OptiMax is virtually smoke-free at any speed because oil is not part of the air-fuel mixture.

"We selected Green Hills' MULTI 2000 IDE for its superior compiler technology," said Jeff Ehlers, chief operating officer at Mercury Marine. "MULTI is well suited for Motorola's MPC555 microcontroller. We particularly liked how the toolset allowed inline functions across modules."

The MULTI 2000 IDE automates all aspects of software development for the MPC555 microcontroller. Featuring an integrated C compiler, programming editor, source-level debugger, graphical program builder, and run-time error checker, MULTI 2000 also includes a version control system, instruction set simulators, performance profiler, and real-time EventAnalyzer™.

The MULTI 2000 IDE features the industry's most advanced MPC555 C/C++ optimizing compiler. The scaleable C/C++ compiler lets programmers use switch options to select any subset of C++ they want, from bare bones C, to full-blown ANSI/ISO C++. The compiler also supports Embedded C++ (EC++), a dialect of C++ optimized for resource-constrained embedded applications that achieves the efficiency of C while preserving many of the best object-oriented features of C++.

The heart of the MULTI environment is a source-level debugger with incremental debug capability that features process- and system-level debug capability. The debugger supports mixed assembly and high-level language formats, includes a language-sensitive expression evaluator, provides a separate debug window for each process, and provides special support for C++ including a Class Browser, object display and template debug capability. The MULTI 2000 debugger is fully RTOS aware, which enables designers to debug and tune their applications at a task level.

More on Green Hills Software

Incorporated in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc., is a leading supplier of royalty-free real-time operating systems and software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Green Hills' royalty-free ThreadX® and INTEGRITY® real-time operating systems, fully integrated with its market leading compilers and MULTI® integrated development environment, provide a total development and run-time solution that addresses both deeply embedded and maximum reliability applications. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with international headquarters in the United Kingdom. For more information on Green Hills Software products, please call 1-805-965-6044 or email inquiries to sales@ghs.com. http://www.ghs.com.

More On Mercury Marine

Mercury Marine Group is a division of Lake Forest, Ill.-based, Brunswick Corporation, a global marketer and manufacturer of leading consumer brands in pleasure boating, marine engines, fitness equipment, ice chests and beverage coolers, bowling and billiards. To contact Mercury Marine, please call 920-929-5000 or visit its website at http://www.mercmarine.com.