This press release is copyrighted by The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE). Its use is granted only to journalists and news media. Embargo date: 26 November 2001, 5:00 p.m. (ET).
Wind River Systems, OSE Systems, QNX Software Systems, Green Hills Software, and Mentor Graphics are among today's leading suppliers of the software that runs embedded systems from industrial robots to rice cookers. They have long had the embedded operating system market to themselves. But that's changing.
As the embedded systems that run our world start to link to the Internet, Linux proponents and Microsoft Corp. are taking their battle over the computer desktop and server markets to consumer-oriented embedded devices such as cell phones and set-top boxes.
The December issue of IEEE Spectrum describes how Microsoft and Linux' proponents--Lineo, MontaVista Software, and Red Hat, among others--have sculpted pint-sized versions of their respective operating systems to run on a host of embedded devices such as microwave ovens, printers, and MP3 players. Thanks to a confluence of factors, including denser IC memories and more powerful microprocessors, the market for embedded operating systems has expanded beyond traditional providers of real-time operating systems (RTOSs).
The increasing competition in embedded space has an impact that extends well beyond who sells the most operating systems. An OS such as Linux, which is royalty free and open source, is a shot fired straight at the heart of every company that sells embedded operating systems. It's also in the business plans that traditional RTOS vendors are beginning to adopt as they vie to maintain market share.
Contact: Harry Goldstein, 212 419 7573, [email protected].For faxed copies of the complete article ["Embedded Battle Royale" by Brian Santo, Contributing Editor, IEEE Spectrum, December 2001, pp. 36-42] or to arrange an interview, contact: Nancy T. Hantman, 212 419 7561, [email protected].
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