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press release - eCos at the Embedded Systems Conference


CYGNUS' OPEN SOURCE ECOS MARKED BY RAPID ADOPTION IN THE EMBEDDED MARKET

Demonstration of MP3 Digital Audio Player Running on eCos Shown During
Embedded Systems Conference

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS CONFERENCE, San Jose, Calif., September 28, 1999 -
Cygnus Solutions, the leader in open source software, announced today
increased availability of eCos (Embedded Cygnus Operating System), the
only open source, royalty-free RTOS (Real Time Operating System) that
is tightly integrated with industry-standard, commercially supported
GNUPro tools. Cygnus also announced, in a separate release yesterday,
the EL/IX Application Programming Interface (API) that enables
applications and middleware to migrate between embedded Linux and eCos
as product requirements warrant.

"The industry response to eCos and its royalty-free, open source
development model has been tremendous. Since its launch ten brief months
ago, eCos has been downloaded more than 15,000 times from the eCos
Sourceware web site, and grown from supporting just three architectures
and processors to seven architectures and more than 25 platforms," said
Tom Barton, senior vice president, Cygnus Solutions. "eCos based products
in the consumer electronics and telecommunications market segments will
ship shortly, followed by announcements of a number of other porting
contracts and design wins already in the pipeline."

A Real-Time Demonstration

eCos, shown here at the Embedded Systems Conference in the Cygnus,
Cirrus Logic and Mojo Designs booths, demonstrates an MP3 digital
audio player running under eCos and highlighting Cygnus' portable DSP
library and the Mojo Eyelet GUI. The featured MP3 application was
created using the eCos Developer Kit (integrated with GNUPro
compiler/debugger and Insight GUI-based version of gdb) for ARM7
targeting the Cirrus Logic EP-7212 processor and audio routines from
Cygnus' DSP libraries. Highlighting eCos' ability to integrate third
party software development tools is the MP3 player's GUI, developed
with the Eyelet GUI library and GUI architect prototyping tool from
MoJo Designs.

The DSP library is a collection of DSP oriented algorithms that have
been written in ANSI C. The library allows for the rapid prototyping
of DSP applications and reduces a project's dependence on
non-portable, hardware specific code. Because it is written in ANSI C,
the library can be targeted to any processor supported by the GNU
compilers. It will exploit GCC optimizations that specifically target
DSP and multimedia instruction sequences, and specific functionality
can be hand optimized in assembler for maximum performance on a given
architecture. (1)

eCos: An RTOS of Choice

Architected as an open-source RTOS, eCos is highly customizable and
adaptable, and can be easily configured with the aid of the eCos GUI
configuration tool to meet exacting application-specific requirements.
Since eCos is an open-source standard created by Cygnus, it inherently
provides engineers with maximum control, flexibility and
understanding, over all aspects of their embedded solution.

"Mediatrix identified eCos as the RTOS of choice for our Audiotrix
Phone Adapter III, a part of our TCP/IP communications networking
solution," said John Moran, president of Mediatrix. "With the wide
range of choices for a run-time solution available in the marketplace,
eCos met the needs for lowest cost, solid integration of tools, and
third party software availability."

"The eCos solution from Cygnus brings a number of advantages to
Ascom's product development team, including the fact that eCos is
royalty-free, open source, and well supported by Cygnus," said Thomas
Kaltenschnee, Project Manager of PLC development at Ascom, a
Swiss-based telecommunications company and participant in the eCos
Gold Partner Program."

Available Third Party Software

The growing demand for eCos is being driven by the increasing
availability of key software components from third party companies,
who have partnered with Cygnus to integrate their components with
eCos. Today, embedded engineers using eCos can also use the following
software to create customized applications for their eCos based
hardware.

  * EBS, Inc. - RTIP and RTFS communications, filesystem and PCMCIA
    components for a wide range of embedded solutions.
  * MoJo Designs - Eyelet GUI, a graphics library and GUI (graphical
    user interface) builder package for designing intuitive graphical
    interface controls.
  * Pacific Softworks, Inc. - Fusion, a fully portable and comprehensive
    suite of Internet protocols and applications.

Available Target Systems

eCos is immediately and freely available as open-source code from
http://www.sourceware.cygnus.com/ecos. It includes support for the ARM,
AM3x, MIPS, PowerPC, SPARC microprocessor families, and specific support
for the following derivatives: Fujitsu SPARClite, Matsushita MN10300,
Motorola PowerPC, Toshiba TX39 MIPS, Linux x86 Synthetic Target.

Additionally, the eCos Early Access Program offers immediate availability
to the latest series of eCos ports to the following microprocessors:
Intel StrongARM SA110, Matsushita AM33, NEC VR4300 MIPS, Hitachi SH3,
Cirrus Logic EP-7209, 7211, 7212, 7111.

About eCos

The eCos sources include kernel components, ITRON configuration, ISO C
and math libraries, eCos simulation environment, and device drivers.
In addition, Sourceware.cygnus.com has been enhanced to provide
AnonCVS access to the eCos sources, enabling immediate access to the
very latest features, ports and bug fixes. Cygnus provides a full
range of eCos Developer Kits - integrated with the latest releases of
GNUPro, support programs, and custom engineering services.

For more information, contact a Cygnus sales representative or Cygnus
corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., at +1-800-CYGNUS1,
+1-408-542-9600, ecos-info@cygnus.com, http://www.cygnus.com/ecos.

About Cygnus

Cygnus Solutions, the leader in open-source software and an innovating
force in Internet software infrastructure, offers development tools and
operating systems based on an open source model, as well as custom
engineering services and developer support services. Founded in 1989,
with headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, Cygnus has sales and
engineering offices throughout North America, Japan, and the United
Kingdom.

                                   ###

(1) There are over 600 functions in the library, including algorithms
for filtering, transforms, image processing, speech compression,
convolutional encoding, video compression, mpeg-2 video decoding, and
audio compression. These functions support floating point, fixed
point, and integer data types.

Cygnus and GNUPro are registered trademarks, and Code Fusion, Insight,
Sourceware, eCos, and EL/IX are trademarks of Cygnus Solutions. All
other company and product names are trademarks of their respective
owners.

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