NEC Electronics and Wind River Expand Collaboration on Linux Solutions for Portable Audio/Visual Devices Market

The SDK will be used in conjunction with a hardware development kit to allow designers to test and evaluate the system performance of EMMA Mobile 1 as well as to develop middleware and software for the system. Customers will be able to engage Wind River Professional Services to transition their Linux solutions to Wind River’s commercial-grade Linux, backed by worldwide support and a comprehensive partner ecosystem.

NEC Electronics has been focusing on steadily expanding its offerings in the digital consumer area, with a particular emphasis on portable audio-visual systems such as multimedia players and mobile televisions. Having launched the first EMMA Mobile chip in November 2008, the company has been providing customers with a solution to design products with robust multimedia processing capabilities at a low power consumption level. The new SDK combines Wind River Linux technology with NEC Electronics’ device drivers and media components. Designers can also leverage the new platform for middleware development to expand it to a wide range of applications and markets.

“NEC Electronics has been providing middleware solutions indispensable in system development through our platformOViA™ partner program with 39 business partners having excellent technological expertise. We’re strengthening our relationship with Wind River to provide customers of portable A/V devices with a comprehensive enablement suite designed to address customer requirements for expanded Linux OS support,” said Masao Hirasawa, general manager, SoC Systems Division, NEC Electronics Corporation. “The jointly developed enablement platform offers the development tools that customers need, acting as a solution to design high-performance, competitive products with incredibly short time-to-market.”

“By selecting to build their SDK using the Wind River distribution, NEC Electronics can offer its customers a very robust out-of-the-box experience, while providing a clear transition path to a market-leading commercial Linux platform,” said Vincent Rerolle, senior vice president and general manager, Linux Product Division, Wind River.

In July 2009, VDC Research Group named Wind River the embedded Linux market leader. Wind River achieved the market share lead in 2008 with greater than 30 percent of total market revenue, according to VDC’s 2009 Linux in the Embedded Systems Market report. Wind River entered the Linux business in 2004 to complement its market-leading, proprietary operating system, VxWorks.