Wind River Unveils Edge Platform to Accelerate the Evolution From Automated Devices to Autonomous Systems

7 months ago

NEWS HIGHLIGHTS

Wind River introduces software platform for edge devices designed to
enable the modernization of legacy systems in aerospace, automotive,
defense, industrial, and medical.

Wind River Helix Virtualization Platform brings together company’s
proven technology and safety expertise for designing and implementing
a range of application options at the edge.

With latest innovative offering, company’s comprehensive edge compute
software portfolio provides a path for the development journey from
automated devices to more intelligent and autonomous systems.

ALAMEDA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/VxWorks?src=hash” target=”_blank”gt;#VxWorkslt;/agt;–Wind
River®, a leader in delivering software to critical
infrastructure, today announced the release of Wind River Helix™
Virtualization Platform (Helix Platform). The offering combines the
company’s industry-leading commercial real-time operating system (RTOS)
and embedded Linux distribution into an edge compute software platform,
and allows other operating systems to run unmodified within the same
framework, providing a software development environment across the Wind
River portfolio.

From modernizing aerospace platforms to updating industrial
infrastructure and advancing autonomous driving, the rise of more
sophisticated edge computing across industries means that system
developers will need to adapt quickly to modern software and cloud
deployment practices, while maintaining dedicated, long-standing
software. This paradigm shift to a more modern development approach will
bring benefits in terms of flexibility, scope of applications and
manageability. But it also brings new design challenges and
uncertainties in terms of the pace of change, hardware and software
technology choices, as well as future-proofing. As critical
infrastructure also become more intelligent, with various forms of
artificial intelligence running on edge devices, further layers of
complexity and uncertainty are being introduced.

Developers need to know they can meet current project and compliance
requirements, and plan their roadmaps, without having to make disruptive
changes in the future if new hardware, software, frameworks or cloud
services are needed. Helix Platform means legacy software can remain
unchanged while running alongside new applications, and it provides all
the benefits of a consistent, scalable and agile platform for edge
devices.

Helix Platform addresses a wide range of critical infrastructure
development needs, from highly-dynamic environments without
certification requirements, to highly-regulated static applications such
as in avionics and industrial, as well as systems requiring the mixing
of safety-certified applications with non-certified ones, such as in
automotive. It maximizes ROI and total cost of ownership (TCO) by
increasing asset value and reducing operational costs with the following
features:

Multi-operating system capabilities enable the consolidation of
mixed-criticality workloads, side by side, on a single edge compute
platform.

Consolidation of multiple applications into one platform allows common
edge devices to serve diverse system architecture needs, such as low
latency control functions on an RTOS alongside Linux-based
applications and frameworks, such as machine learning.

“The industry is moving in a direction of heterogeneous systems where
the development of many critical infrastructure systems requires both an
open source Linux and a proven commercial RTOS, and Helix Platform
offers the best of both worlds with VxWorks® and Wind River
Linux integrated in a single solution, from a single supplier,” said Jim
Douglas, Wind River president and CEO. “Drawing from our rich proven
technology heritage and unmatched safety expertise, Helix Platform is a
critical building block for how we will continue to accelerate the
evolution from automated devices towards more intelligent and autonomous
systems.”

The offering comprises VxWorks along with its virtualization technology,
integrated with Wind River Linux and Wind River Simics® for
system simulation. It meets the stringent safety-certification
requirements of the DO-178C, IEC 61508, and ISO 26262 safety standards.
Helix Platform is operating system-agnostic, providing the capability to
run any unmodified guest operating system, such as Microsoft®
Windows®, roll-your-own, and others. It also provides
multi-core hardware support and availability on the latest Arm®,
Intel®, NXP®, and Xilinx® silicon
platforms that enable both 32- and 64-bit guest operating systems.

“Today’s IoT system development requires more sophisticated and
streamlined software development offerings. Wind River Helix
Virtualization Platform targets this need, providing a flexible platform
capable of addressing the complex and heterogeneous compute requirements
of tomorrow’s devices.”

–Chris Rommel, Executive Vice President, VDC Research

“Autonomy is transforming the industry and developers in markets such as
automotive and industrial need innovative and safe solutions to overcome
the challenges presented by the real-time and mixed criticality
capabilities required for these applications. Arm’s industry leading
functional safety IP portfolio in concert with Wind River software,
provides developers with solutions that safely scale across multiple
markets and certification standards.”

“NXP shares Wind River’s vision of converged workloads at the edge.
Virtualization enables simultaneous operation of real-time and
high-level operating systems, and NXP has provided multiple generations
of processors with hardware virtualization built on Power Architecture®
and Arm architecture. NXP is pleased to help enable the Wind River Helix
Virtualization Platform to run on Layerscape® processors.”

“With the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ MPSoC being the first silicon to run
the new platform, Wind River and Xilinx can now offer advanced solutions
to the aerospace, automotive, and industrial markets. We will continue
to work closely with Wind River in defining compute architectures for
additional markets – especially those where system flexibility, high
performance and safety, alongside broad application support are needed.”

Wind River is a global leader in delivering edge computing software. The
company’s technology has been powering the safest, most secure devices
in world since 1981, and is found in more than 2 billion products. Wind
River offers a comprehensive portfolio, supported by world-class global
professional services and support and a broad partner ecosystem. Wind
River software and expertise are accelerating digital transformation of
critical infrastructure systems that demand the highest levels of
safety, security, performance, and reliability. To learn more, visit
Wind River at www.windriver.com.

Wind River is a trademark or registered trademark of Wind River Systems,
Inc. and its affiliates. Other names may be the trademarks of their
respective owners.