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Customer Wins, Broad Solutions and Industry Firsts Underscore Metrowerks’ Approach
to Embedded Linux OS Development
Austin, Texas, October 18, 2004 – An ambitious and innovative approach to embedded
Linux® OS development is meeting with marketplace success and establishing a leadership
position for Metrowerks Corporation.
With flexible pricing, fully maintained board support packages (BSPs), and feature-rich,
end-to-end development solutions for leading architectures, Metrowerks offers
a comprehensive lineup of embedded Linux solutions that help customers speed and
simplify the creation of products based on the Linux OS.
“The quality, breadth and integrated nature of Metrowerks’ offerings position
the company as one of the early leaders in the embedded Linux development solutions
market,” said Chris Lanfear, embedded software group director for Venture Development
Corporation. “Metrowerks provides the kind of single-source, comprehensive offerings
that are fueling the rapid adoption of Linux technology throughout embedded markets.”
This approach is paying off in the marketplace, where more than 100 customers
now use Metrowerks Linux OS development technologies and services, including world-class
companies in the wireless, transportation and network communications industries.
Lowering the Cost of Entry
Metrowerks now complements its traditional license-based pricing with flexible
subscription models for its comprehensive line of embedded Linux technology development
tools, including Metrowerks CodeWarrior™ development suites that run on Linux
hosts and support development for a variety of leading semiconductor architectures.
The subscription model provides broader development support to Metrowerks customers,
spreads costs over time and lowers risk by limiting the up-front commitment involved
with adopting embedded Linux technology.
“This pricing model will further foster the adoption of Linux across embedded
markets, and position Metrowerks as an attractive resource for companies looking
to incorporate Linux technology into their product designs,” said Matt Harris,
president and CEO, Metrowerks.
Subscription pricing for Metrowerks embedded Linux development technologies is
available beginning November 1, 2004.
Comprehensive Support for Embedded Linux OS Development
By offering a single source for development, run control, code analysis and development
tools, as well as hardware, software, services and commercial Linux distributions,
Metrowerks is bringing professional quality and reliability to embedded Linux
markets. The company supports developers throughout the embedded Linux development
process, from board bring-up and kernel-level debugging to driver development
and application creation - all within a Linux OS development environment.
For developers, this single source strategy delivers turnkey development capabilities
for an out-of-the-box experience that speeds time to market and provides a unified
development toolchain that allows managed collaboration for entire engineering
organizations.
Innovation and Tools Leadership
Metrowerks’ approach to Linux development has established a track record of innovation
and “industry firsts”. The company was a leader in offering non-GDB-based environments
(GNU debugger) to address development tasks from device driver development to
application creation. The company is also among the limited number of companies
providing tools that support the creation of a Linux kernel and facilitate kernel-level
debugging, driver development and application development tasks. Metrowerks also
collaborated with Enea Embedded Technology to help the company deliver the first
integrated software platform for telecom and datacom systems. Metrowerks and Enea
offer a seamless link between the Linux OS and the Enea OSE™ Real-Time Operating
System (RTOS), enabling original equipment manufacturers to deploy and distribute
fault-tolerant, high-availability software across systems utilizing multiple,
heterogeneous processors and DSPs.
Broad Linux OS Support for Freescale
Freescale Semiconductor, the parent company of Metrowerks, understands the value
that embedded Linux technology offers its customers. As a result, Freescale engineers
work closely with Metrowerks to ensure that Freescale customers have world-class
tools and BSPs customized for its processors.
Metrowerks offers the most comprehensive Linux OS development support for Freescale
platforms in the industry. Several leading Freescale architectures are shipped
with Metrowerks BSPs already pre-flashed, helping customers to simplify development
and speed time to market.
Metrowerks offers freely downloadable BSPs for Freescale’s MCF5272/5282 and i.MX
architectures, as well as for the following Freescale platforms containing PowerPC®
cores: MPC5200, MPC74xx, PowerQUICC™ I, PowerQUICC II™, and PowerQUICC III. Additionally,
Metrowerks sells CodeWarrior suites for Linux OS hosted development environments
that support Freescale’s i.MX and ColdFire® architectures and the PowerPC architecture,
enabling Freescale customers in the industrial controls, wireless and networking
equipment industries to assimilate Linux into next generation products.
Shaping the Future of Embedded Linux Development
Metrowerks has an established history of supporting the open source development
community by contributing to industry standard organizations. Metrowerks executives
have served in leadership capacities with the Embedded Linux Consortium. Also,
Metrowerks is an active member of the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum (CELF),
an industry group focused on the advancement of Linux technology as an open source
platform for consumer electronics devices. Five Metrowerks engineers sit on CELF
working groups. Metrowerks also plans to soon join the Open Source Development
Labs (OSDL), a global consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of Linux
technology by enterprise companies.
About Metrowerks
Metrowerks Corporation creates CodeWarrior software and hardware products and
services for developers that focus on the consumer electronics, transportation,
wireless, and networking and communications industries. The CodeWarrior product
line includes hardware and software development tools and middleware that enable
customers to decrease their time to market. Founded in 1985, Metrowerks is an
independent subsidiary of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. Metrowerks corporate headquarters
are in Austin, Texas. Regional headquarters are in Munich, Singapore and Tokyo.
For more information: www.metrowerks.com.
About Freescale Semiconductor
Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. (NYSE:FSL) is a global leader in the design and
manufacture of embedded semiconductors for the automotive, consumer, industrial,
networking and wireless markets. Freescale became a publicly traded company in
July, 2004 after more than 50 years as part of Motorola, Inc. (NYSE:MOT). The
company is based in Austin, Texas, and has design, research and development, manufacturing
or sales operations in more than 30 countries. Freescale Semiconductor's 2003
sales were $4.9 billion (US). For more information: www.freescale.com.
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