BusinessWire
February 22, 2006 09:30 AM US Pacific Timezone

PrismTech Announces Availability of Spectra OE: the First, Second-Generation* Operating Environment for SDR

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 22, 2006--
* A vertically-integrated (CF, ORB, COSx3), low-footprint (<2MB), single-vendor, SCA-compliant software platform offering superior integration, optimization and tools. Uniquely supports GPP, DSP and FPGA deployments while maintaining portability. Built by SDR developers for SDR developers!

PrismTech(TM), a leading provider of productivity tools and middleware, today announced the GA release of the Spectra(TM) Operating Environment (OE) v1.0. Spectra OE is a new second generation high-performance, low-overhead run-time environment (software platform) for software defined radio (SDR) applications.

Part of PrismTech's Spectra SDR Tools suite, Spectra OE provides a high-performance, low-overhead core framework (CF) and middleware implementation that runs on any mix of general purpose processor (GPP), digital signal processor (DSP), and field programmable gate array (FPGA) processor technologies. Pre-integrated with a number of Real-Time Operating Systems (RTOSs), DSP BIOSs, and Register Transfer Logic (RTL) processors, Spectra OE is the only SDR OE built, optimized, and supported by a single vendor.

This allows PrismTech to optimize the OE footprint to under 2MB: a 10x reduction in footprint versus first generation SDR OEs. This ultra low footprint for a SDR OE directly translates into lower size, weight, and power (SW&P) requirements and thus makes SDR viable for a wide range of resource-constrained wireless platforms. Spectra OE is also optimized for performance across the complete run-time architecture (CF, middleware, operating system (OS) and custom transports unlike first generation OEs).

Spectra OE contains unique technology only available from PrismTech. A pioneer in embedded middleware, PrismTech has produced ultra-low footprint middleware for both DSP and RTL processors to 'enable' these processing elements for SDR applications without those hardware applications becoming highly hardware specific. This breakthrough in hardware abstraction layer technology, which allows applications, middleware, and hardware to separately evolve, is a significant step forward for the whole wireless industry.

Spectra OE's vertically integrated design, standards-compliance and hardware portability combine to disconnect the software and hardware lifecycles, thus enabling radio configuration and code reuse. This in turn helps extend the life of software applications and reduce the number of hardware platforms a radio OEM needs to support. Thus Spectra OE's technological edge and elegance result in competitive advantage for the user.

As a pre-integrated software platform, Spectra OE also greatly reduces the complexity of the run-time environment for the developer, providing a single API rather than three or more product APIs and the associated compatibility, robustness and evolution issues.

Spectra OE is available for numerous GPP, DSP and FPGA processors and OS platforms and can be ported to practically any SDR signal processing environment. It incorporates in a single pre-integrated package all required licensable software**. (Alternatively RTOSs can be acquired separately).

"Many alternative first generation SDR OE offerings were just bundles of two or more individual components: Core Frameworks, CORBA ORBs, Common Object Services," said Dominick Paniscotti, VP Engineering, SDR Products, PrismTech. "Spectra OE has been designed and built as a complete, integrated, and optimized environment from day one so that we can offer such high performance and low overhead benefits."

Further information about Spectra OE is available from PrismTech's website at http://www.prismtech.com/spectra.

About PrismTech

Founded in 1992, with offices in the USA and Europe, PrismTech is a privately held software products company. PrismTech serves international Fortune 500 customers in the telecommunications, data communications, defense and aerospace sectors. PrismTech is an acknowledged leader in productivity tools and middleware, with solutions ranging from wide-scale integration to embedded real-time systems, supporting applications from operations support systems (OSS) through to software-defined radio (SDR). For additional information about PrismTech, visit the web site at http://www.prismtech.com.

Spectra is a trademark of PrismTech. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. ** Subject to the agreement of the RTOS/BIOS licensor.