SHORT TAKES

EMPLOYEES & GROUP TO BUY COCREATE SOFTWARE

Fort Collins, COLO. — CoCreate Software, Inc. announced the purchase of the company by its employees and an international investment group consisting of independent financial investors 3i PLC and the Triton Fund. The purchase contract is subject to regulatory agency approval. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. “This is an exciting time for CoCreate and its employees,” said Tilman Schad, president and chief executive officer of CoCreate. “The company is charting new territory in the area of web-based collaboration, and being an independent organization will allow us to respond to the market faster than ever before. This move also gives our employee-owners even stronger incentive to innovate and take the creative risks needed to lead this burgeoning market.”

CoCreate Software was established as a subsidiary of Hewlett-Packard Company in 1996 to enable it to become an independent software company. Since that time, CoCreate has established itself as a leader in the growing collaboration market. Prior to its establishment as a subsidiary, CoCreate had been HP’s Mechanical Design Division since 1984. The company’s award-winning collaboration technology, OneSpace, gives users access to the industry’s first CAD-independent, 3-D collaboration solution, enabling all members of a mechanical-design team to interact with geometric models in real time over the Internet. Using OneSpace, participants on computers around the world can view, manipulate and annotate a solid model in a virtual conference room. Tilman F. Schad will continue to serve as president and chief executive officer of CoCreate. “The opportunities in the collaboration market are virtually limitless, and we are now organized to capitalize on them,” said Schad. “This structure will foster a more focused company, with increased marketing, R&D and sales efforts. Innovation, commitment to customer support, and product quality are a part of our strong HP heritage and will continue to be our differentiators in the market.” Information about CoCreate Software Inc. and its products is available on the web at http://www.cocreate.com .

RADISYS & LYNUXWORKS TO DEVELOP OPEN ARCHITECTURE

Hillsboro, ORE. — RadiSys Corp., a leading global designer and manufacturer of building blocks enabling next-generation Internet and communications systems, and LynuxWorks announce plans to develop an Open Architecture High-Availability Linux system targeted for telecom and embedded system applications which require “five-nines” or better availability. “Five-nines” availability refers to system availability greater than 99.999% of the time, implying five minutes or less down time per year. Implemented as an enhancement to LynuxWorks’ BlueCat Linux and the Linux-compatible LynxOS real-time operating system (OS), the new OS extensions will provide full support for CompactPCI hot swap operations allowing on-line repair of standard peripheral controllers as well as completely dynamic system reconfiguration. The OS will also support failover between redundant system host processors in a CompactPCI system and advanced platform management through the Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI).

In contrast to other high-availability operating systems tailored to use platform-specific capabilities of a particular manufacturer’s systems, RadiSys and LynuxWorks will produce software which functions completely through open, standard interfaces. The key specification that makes this possible is IPMI, which has been adopted as the standard platform management interface for CompactPCI systems. By using IPMI for all platform management functions, the High-Availability BlueCat Linux system can operate on any manufacturer’s platform that conforms to this specification. LynuxWorks and RadiSys each bring significant relevant expertise to this project. Both are charter members of the High Availability on Intel Architecture Forum sponsored by Intel Corporation; active members of the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG); and active Intel Applied Computing Platform Providers (ACPP) members. LynuxWorks has many years of experience in supporting high availability in their LynxOS real-time operating system as well as significant experience with using Linux in embedded and telecom systems with their standard Blue Cat Linux offering. RadiSys has led the CompactPCI industry in development of high availability systems managed via the IPMI specification, and chaired the committee that wrote the specification for standardizing the implementation of IPMI in CompactPCI systems. “We are pleased to be working with LynuxWorks to create an open architecture high-availability Linux operating system,” said Glen Myers, president and CEO, RadiSys. “By combining the wealth of experience LynuxWorks has with high-availability embedded operating systems and our expertise in building open architecture high-availability platforms, we are helping our customers solve the real problems they are facing in moving from proprietary to open systems.”

MULTI SELECTED FOR MERCURY

Santa Barbara, CALIF. — Green Hills Software announced an agreement with Mercury Computer Systems whereby Mercury will incrementally include Green Hills’ MULTI 2000 integrated development environment with future versions of Mercury’s software development environment. The integration of MULTI will greatly enhance the productivity of software development for Mercury’s RACE++ multiprocessor systems, including those based on the leading-edge Motorola PowerPC 7400 processor with AltiVec technology. “MULTI’s integrated debug, program build, profiling, and version control facilities streamline the development of complex multiprocessor software for Mercury systems based on the RACE++ architecture and PowerPC microprocessors,” said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. “At the same time, our optimizing compilers, which implement the AltiVec extensions to the C language, make it easier for programmers to harness the PowerPC’s superscalar and vector processing facilities without having to program in assembly language.”

“Integrated development environments for embedded real-time systems have become more powerful, and MULTI is the acknowledged leader,” said Rich Jaenicke, director of product marketing at Mercury. “We chose MULTI for its powerful user interface, highly-integrated toolset, and extensibility to multiprocessor software development. Offering MULTI to Mercury software developers is the first step in Mercury’s plan to provide best-of-breed mainstream software for our RACE++ high-performance embedded computer systems.” Mercury Computer Systems provides high-performance PCI and VME multiprocessing systems for digital signal and image processing applications based on the RACEway Interlink Standard. The RACEway standard (RACEway Interlink ANSI/VITA 5-1994), originally developed by Mercury, transforms the PCI and VMEbus from single-transaction buses into scalable, real-time, switched fabrics that are ideal for multiprocessing applications scaling from several to hundreds of processors. The RACE++ architecture, also developed by Mercury, is a second-generation architecture that extends the aggregate bandwidth of RACE crossbar switches from 480 Mbyte/sec to 1 Gbyte/sec. Visit Mercury on the Web at http://www.mc.com .

============================================================