Wind River to ship Yocto Linux with boards to boost takeup
Commercial embedded Linux has a takeup of just 3% in projects says Davide Ricci, Senior Product Manager for Open Source Platforms at Wind River and that hasn’t changed over the last three years.
"Out of 100 devices with Linux only 3 are built with a commercial grade Linux and the rest use a ‘roll your own’ Linux either from the silicon vendor or as a distribution, and that hasn’t changed since 2009," he said. "The trouble is the Linux from the silicon vendors is only intended for evaluation and its not an easy apples-to-apples comparison."
Wind River’s Linux 5.0 has based on a new kernel that comes from the open source Yocto project which aims to provide a commone kernel across as many embedded processors as possible. The project includes Intel (which owns Wind River) and Texas Instruments as well as Freescale Semiconductor and Xilinx. "The eo-system has grown dramatically this year," he said.
Wind River has ported its own APIs to the technology so that existing users of its Linux are still supported and is feeding back kernel developments and quality and test metrics into the project. This also allows its test and simulation software to be used with the new version. This will provide Linux that can be used straight out of the box to evaluate boards and chips, says Ricci.
The software will ship with board support packages (BSPs) from Intel and from smaller vendors. "There are groups in Intel that will ship with Wind River Linux 5 and we will see that happening more and more often and there are other partners that will do the same," he said. "The value is in the servies for support and mantenance and you get these services when you activate the Linux that comes with the board."
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