Wind River Releases Digital Media Frameworks

By Michael Foley

(04/26/01, 01:36:46 PM EDT)

Wind River Systems' Digital Media Framework for creating multimedia appliances automates the development process by implementing Wind River's VxWorks operating system and development tools. Their Digital Media Framework continues Wind River's strategy to target the VxWorks platform to specific vertical market segments.

The Digital Media Framework is a development environment and methodology designed to reduce consumer electronics manufacturers' time-to-market by providing development tools, functional modularity, and platform migration. The platform provides the basic features needed for multimedia appliances and allows consumer electronics manufacturers to focus on product differentiation for next generation devices.

Wind River has developed the Digital Media Framework to incorporate the latest digital media standards and to accelerate its integration into middleware structures. This framework is a design environment consisting of an event management subsystem, functional libraries, simulation environment, and test scripts. The technology combines operating system tools with integrated drivers and creates a toolkit with:

• Modular architecture, permitting rapid configuration and change control to the end hardware
• Platform-independent scaleable architecture that can be extended to support multiple middleware platforms
• A hardware independent simulation environment that allows application development prior to hardware completion
• Simplification for designs using future implementations, including MHP (Multimedia Home Platform), DASE (Digital TV Applications Software Environment), and OCAP (OpenCable Applications Platform) among others
• A standard and consistent system event manager, aiding structured development and simplified debugging