ESC: Cygnus develops API in bid to unify embedded Linux

ESC: Cygnus develops API in bid to unify embedded Linux
SAN JOSE, Calif. — A veteran company of the open-source movement will unveil this week what it hopes will become a unifying application programming interface for using the GNU-Linux operating system in the embedded world. Riding the coattails of Linux' popularity, Cygnus Solutions Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.) will spin its EL/IX API at the Embedded Systems Conference (ESC) as an effort to keep Linux from fragmenting in the embedded space. But the move is already drawing mixed reviews from some developers.

EL/IX would also allow developers to use desktop Linux software to build embedded applications for Linux or on eCos, Cygnus' real-time operating system. Cygnus founder Michael Tiemann is hoping that factor will lure developers from traditional RTOS vendors like Wind River Systems Inc.

The progression of Linux into embedded markets has put the OS in a precarious spot, Tiemann said, because chunks of the kernel must be culled to fit embedded applications.

"Linux is designed for a set of perfectly rational assumptions based on desktop and server computing," he said. "Those assumptions go out the window when you start talking about battery life, or when you start talking about limited memory."

Developers have managed to trim the kernel to fit their needs, but Tiemann worries that these uncoordinated efforts will lead to embedded kernels that are incompatible with one another and with the overall Linux kernel, splintering the market.

"You've got this Balkanized embedded world that can't seem to settle on any one thing," he said. "It would be a tragedy if Linux's entry into the embedded market caused fragmentation."

EL/IX will provide the launching point for spreading an application from the desktop down to the embedded or deeply embedded environments, Tiemann said. "It's going to make more people have more access to more markets, and that's going to stimulate content development."

Cygnus is making EL/IX available as an open-source API, downloadable from the Web. The company plans to lead a consortium to help mold EL/IX, which is in bare-bones form for its initial implementation.

Self-healing movement

Skeptics point out that fragmentation has not occurred among desktop varieties of Linux, and some question whether it is an issue now. Some Linux advocates describe their movement as a self-healing one, where inadequate or incompatible code gets ignored by the community. Moreover, the argument goes, programmers don't take Linux down divergent paths because they would lose the advantage of open-source development — namely, the volume of programmers able to write for their software.

"The Linux community has every incentive not to fragment," said James Ready, chief executive of MontaVista Software Inc. (Sunnyvale, Calif.), which created its own embedded Linux, called Hard Hat. "The community will take care of that problem."

Cygnus' Tiemann disagreed, saying that the requirements of wildly varying embedded systems will cause more trouble than did the desktop.

"There's an actually fragmenting force," Tiemann said. "Just because Lineo and Hard Hat haven't fallen off the cliff yet doesn't mean there aren't market forces pushing them."

EL/IX doesn't necessarily trump the existing embedded-Linux efforts such as MontaVista's Hard Hat. "Jim [Ready] doesn't have to perform any particular effort to join this," Tiemann said.

But Ready insisted that divergence hasn't been a problem with Hard Hat Linux. "When we're using embedded Linux, it's the same Linux you're using on your desktop," in terms of system calls, he said.

Like Ready, Greg Ungerer of Moreton Bay Ventures Pty. Ltd. (Sumner Park, Australia) said he encountered no particular difficulties in moving Linux to an embedded space — the Motorola Inc. Coldfire processor, in this case. "The standard system-call set works fine," Ungerer said. But he admitted that the task gets more difficult for smaller embedded environments.

So the impact of EL/IX will depend in part on which developers create embedded Linux ports, and which applications they target. "People are still probing around with Linux for general-purpose systems. It's only this year and on that we're going to see where Linux is going to go in embedded systems," said Daya Nadamuni, an analyst with Dataquest Inc. (San Jose, Calif.).

EL/IX could do the most good in the area of real-time processing, Ungerer said. Linux isn't inherently suited for hard real-time operations, and recently some groups have shown interest in pushing it into that realm.

"There are people working on different real-time extensions, so if they standardized that, it would be a good thing," Ungerer said. That's also the area where Linux could pose the most risk to traditional RTOS vendors, he added.

"Maybe Linux is going to carry over to areas which were served by RTOSes but didn't have to be," he said. "Stuff that's hard real-time, I don't think Linux is going to make an impact there for some time, if at all."

Analysts last week looked on EL/IX as Cygnus' bid to get more involved in Linux. "It looks like a clever way of differentiating themselves in the Linux field," said Jerry Krasner of Electronics Market Forecasters.

Most interesting to Krasner was that EL/IX will let developers use desktop Linux to create embedded applications, whether for Linux proper or for eCos.

Revenue Cygnus will get from EL/IX will mainly come from selling the GNUPro set of tools, and from support and engineering services.

"There seem to be a lot of people looking for where they can take Linux," Ungerer said. "Everybody wants all these things you can get with Linux, and they want them in the embedded space."

That pinch is felt even at Cygnus, which has preached open-source principles since before Linux was created. The company is populated with Linux users, and Tiemann admitted they have urged him to get Cygnus more involved in Linux.