Wind River’s Latest VxWorks Offering Brings Benefits of Java to Embedded Development

With IoT as the backdrop, I believe this is a new golden age for the operating system, and overall embedded business as companies across market segments are looking to digitally transform not only individual devices, but also interconnected systems. A major challenge becomes programing, testing and updating these devices remotely in the field as each device could be running a different operating system.

With this in mind, we are pleased to introduce Wind River Micro Runtime for VxWorks real-time operating system (RTOS), which adds Java application support to our portfolio that also includes C/C++ support. IoT developers can use Micro Runtime to design applications bringing the benefits of Java to embedded development such as increased development efficiency and code portability, and over-the-air bug fixes saving money and creating new revenue opportunities.

Micro Runtime provides an optimized embedded Java runtime engine enabling our customers to leverage the skills of millions of Java developers and also reuse applications to run on their existing VxWorks investment. Micro Runtime also solves the typical Java support issue faced by small footprint and resource constrained embedded devices.

Specifically, Micro Runtime is a complete solution with the Java runtime engine and an Eclipse-based full software development kit (SDK) on a Windows or Linux host to develop, debug and deploy Java applications for VxWorks-based devices.

Figure 1. Micro Runtime Architecture Diagram

This is the latest in a series of enhancements to our industry-leading RTOS, including the recent introduction of VxWorks Plus. VxWorks Plus enhances VxWorks with a broad suite of advanced middleware features and protocols that help address a host of specialized needs unique to specific industries, including aerospace and defense, industrial, medical, consumer, and networking. The security, safety, networking, connectivity, device manageability, user interface, and graphics capabilities included in VxWorks are what companies today require to create the most demanding devices for the IoT.

Wind River also recently announced availability of the VxWorks client for the IBM Watson IoT platform, marking the first in a series of VxWorks clients for cloud service providers to follow.

It’s definitely an exciting time to be in the operating system and embedded business, and extremely gratifying to watch our customers transform their businesses with the help of Wind River technology.