SAN JOSE, ESC Silicon Valley, April 3, 2006 - QNX Software Systems today unveiled the new QNX Multi-Core Expedite Program, through which QNX customers get early access to multi-core hardware and software platforms to start evaluating and prototyping multi-core systems.
Under the new program, qualifying members will receive 120-day evaluations of the industry's most advanced multi-core offerings, including:
* The QNX® Momentics® development suite Professional Edition and the QNX Neutrino® Multi-Core Technology Development Kit - the industry's only comprehensive software infrastructure to fully address the imminent transition to multi-core processors.
* The Intel® Pentium® Processor Extreme Edition - a dual-core processor with Hyper-Threading Technology that, together, provides four logical processors that can execute four threads in parallel.
The industry transition to multi-core processors is rapidly gaining speed. The ability to increase CPU performance by increasing the processor clock rate has reached practical limits. To address this, the industry is shifting to multi-core processor implementations. Multi-core processors offer benefits that include higher MIPS per watt, reduced board area, and greater overall performance. However, the arrival of multi-core hardware rewrites the rules for embedded software developers, who, until now, have worked mostly with uniprocessor designs.
Leveraging the massively scalable QNX Neutrino RTOS, members of the QNX Multi-Core Expedite Program can try out a rich suite of award-winning multiprocessing solutions and identify the model best suited to their project requirements. In addition to offering both asymmetric (AMP) and symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) capabilities, QNX has pioneered an innovative "hybrid" capability called bound multiprocessing (BMP). This groundbreaking technology simplifies code migration and future-proofs designs for processors that integrate four, eight, or more CPU cores.
"The QNX multi-core enabled RTOS and tool suite, coupled with Intel's multi-core hardware platform, provides developers with a powerful multi-core development environment," according to Phil Ames, embedded segment marketing manager, Intel Corp. "Intel and QNX are enabling developers worldwide to rapidly leverage advancements in power-efficient performance to build next-generation embedded systems."
"The biggest challenge in migrating embedded products to multi-core hardware lies with shifting your software programming paradigm from the traditional uniprocessing model to a multiprocessing solution," said Dave Curley, vice president of marketing for QNX Software Systems. "The QNX Multi-Core Expedite Program shortens that learning curve by giving customers access to groundbreaking technologies from two leading companies in the embedded market, helping engineering teams to familiarize themselves with these advanced platforms and allowing them to quickly harness the power of multi-core designs using QNX's flexible suite of multiprocessing options."
To qualify for the program, companies must submit their application online by visiting http://www.qnx.com/innovation/forms/multicoreexpedite. To find out more about the benefits of multi-core architectures and multiprocessing, visit the QNX Innovation Center at http://www.qnx.com/innovation.