San Jose, CA. Embedded Systems Conference Booth #636. September 26, 2000 -- Green Hills Software today announced Version 3.0 of the INTEGRITY® real-time operating system. Tightly integrated with Green Hills' MULTI® software development environment, INTEGRITY 3.0 is a memory-protected RTOS optimized for mission-critical embedded applications that place a premium on maximum reliability, security and testability.

The INTEGRITY 3.0 kernel provides a number of new features, including a new highest locker semaphore and ARINC 653 partition scheduling. INTEGRITY 3.0 also features enhanced multiprocessor debugging support, a new simulation environment, a new Integrate utility, and support for a variety of popular Internet and telecom protocols, including TCP/IP, PPP, FTP, DHCP, ATM, SS7, Frame Relay, ISDN, H.323, V5, and X.25. INTEGRITY also supports Interniche's web server, browser, and TCP/IP stack, which make it easy to embed Internet connectivity into target systems running the INTEGRITY RTOS. INTEGRITY 3.0 is the only commercially developed memory-protected real-time operating system to be offered on a royalty-free basis.

"INTEGRITY is an ideal fit for commercial high-end applications like telecommunications because it was designed from the ground-up to handle the complex fault-tolerance and high availability demands of such systems," said John Carbone, Green Hills vice president of marketing. "INTEGRITY is a proven solution in telecom applications today."

INTEGRITY is a scalable, ROMable real-time operating system that uses the hardware memory protection facilities of MMUs to separate the kernel and user tasks into separate address spaces. This effectively builds a firewall between the kernel and each user task, preventing errant or malicious tasks from corrupting user data, the kernel, interprocess communications, device drivers, or other user tasks.

INTEGRITY employs a pre-emptive, real-time, priority-based multitasking scheduler optimized for fast deterministic response. INTEGRITY provides guaranteed resource availability in both the time and space domain. In the space domain, INTEGRITY enables programmers to assign each address space a fixed amount of physical memory, which prevents tasks from exhausting system memory and depriving other tasks. In the time domain, INTEGRITY allows programmers to assign each task a fixed percentage of CPU time, which prevents priority inversion and keeps tasks from hogging the CPU. The scheduler also supports ARINC-653 partition scheduling, which guarantees resource availability in the time domain at the address space level.

To enhance determinism and guarantee minimum interrupt latency, the INTEGRITY kernel never masks or blocks interrupts while manipulating critical data structures. The kernel also uses pre-emptible kernel services with short, bounded computation times, and avoids instructions for long-latency operations such as division and string manipulation, which can block interrupts in some systems. This is a big advantage over competitive RTOSs, which periodically and unpredictably disable interrupts.

INTEGRITY 3.0 features comprehensive networking and embedded Internet support. INTEGRITY comes standard with a free BSD TCP/IP and UDP/IP stack, BSP-compatible Sockets, Rlogin, and a simple web server. In addition, INTEGRITY supports Interniche's TCP/IP stack, WebPort web server, NicheView world wide web browser, networking protocols (UDP, DHCP, FTP, and Telnet), routing protocols (NATrouter and PPP) and SNMP management software, which is optimized for embedded applications. INTEGRITY also supports Trillium's telecom protocols, including SS7, ATM, Broadband ISDN, Frame Relay/ATM, MPLS, H.323 Control (VoIP), TCP/UDP Convergence, ASN.1 Encoder/Decoder - PER, RTC/RTPC, SIP, SCTP, SS7 MTP Level 3 user adaptation layer, GPRS, 3G, V5 and GR-303, ISDN, Q.930/Q.931, and X.25/X.75.

INTEGRITY 3.0 introduces new "Field Upgrade" and "Field Debug" technologies that enable high-availability application developers to work with systems already deployed in the field. The ability to download software upgrades, and to debug a running system remotely set INTEGRITY apart from most existing RTOS products on the market today.

INTEGRITY's new Integrate utility greatly simplifies system configuration and reduces development time by precluding the need to write complex initialization code. The utility enables designers to establish the initial state of tasks, connections, and other kernel objects across address spaces. It also enables designers to verify security and guarantee resource availability.

Multiprocessor Debug Support

INTEGRITY 3.0 is tightly integrated with the MULTI debugger, which enables programmers to simultaneously debug multiple tasks across multiple address spaces (each task occupying its own window), whether those tasks reside on a single processor, or are distributed across multiple processors. MULTI automatically activates a new debugger window when a task is created, and provides a task roster window for tracking tasks and choosing which tasks to debug. Through MULTI, programmers can set task-specific and address-space-wide breakpoints, and monitor/record I/O and interprocess communications. They can also perform execution profiling at the task, address space, or system level to precisely pinpoint performance bottlenecks.

The MULTI EventAnalyzer builds on the baseline debug capabilities of the MULTI source-level debugger, making it easier for programmers to decipher complex real-time interactions. The EventAnalyzer GUI operates like a high-level logic analyzer, displaying all context switches, INTEGRITY API calls, and interrupts in a time-relative manner using intuitive, yet powerful graphical displays.

INTEGRITY 3.0 provides full support for MULTI's ISIM instruction set simulator, which enables designers to develop and debug code for INTEGRITY-based PowerPC systems without having access to the target hardware. Twenty times faster than conventional instruction set simulators, ISIM simulates INTEGRITY-based applications using the same PowerPC code that runs on the target. This enables designers to determine precise application size characteristics during simulation. It also enables them to use the same compilers and development tools for both simulation and target execution, thereby boosting programmer productivity.

INTEGRITY 2000 is available for a variety of PowerPC processors, including the PowerPC 821, 860, 8260, 60x, 740/750, and PowerPC 7400/Altivec. INTEGRITY also offers board support packages for a broad range of popular CPU boards, including those from Force, Motorola, DY-4 and Radstone.

More on Green Hills Software, Inc.

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.

Green Hills Software, and MULTI are registered trademarks and INTEGRITY is a trademark of Green Hills Software, Inc. Other trademarks are trademarks (registered or otherwise) of the respective trademark owners.