CAMBRIDGE, UK -- October 07, 2004 -- eCosCentric Limited, the eCos and RedBoot experts, will be participating in a moderated panel discussion, sponsored by The Institution of Electrical Engineers at the upcoming Embedded Systems Show. eCosCentric will join representatives from vendors Microsoft, MontaVista Software, Green Hills Software and Accelerated Technology to consider "How much is an RTOS worth?".

With a mix of proprietary and open source solution vendors on the panel, the discussion will be exciting! Panel members will consider benefits of the differing approaches in terms of costs, licensing and technology, and how these apply to the overall embedded market.

With royalty and licensing fees forming a large part of the $600 million global cost to manufacturers (according to VDC, The Embedded Software Strategic Market Intelligence Program 2002/2003) this is a topic of concern to design engineers, systems architects and technical managers alike. Decision makers need to be certain that, while being liberated from vendor lock-in and restrictive licensing terms at the RTOS level, that they do not lose out in terms of ongoing vendor support, reliability and future flexibility. eCosCentric will present a brief synopsis of eCosPro^®, outlining the strengths and rich feature-set found in the high performance and highly configurable eCos RTOS.

The panel discussion will be held from 13:00-14:00 on Thursday October 14 at the Embedded Systems Show 2004 at the NEC in Birmingham, UK. There will be ample opportunity for the audience to ask the panel questions.

About eCosPro

eCosPro is a stable, rigorously tested and fully supported version of the eCos open source real-time operating system and RedBoot bootstrap firmware. The eCosPro Developer's Kit is a distribution of eCosPro which includes prebuilt eCos host tools and industry standard gcc compiler toolchain, full documentation and an Eclipse-based integrated development environment that helps streamline eCos application development.

About eCosCentric

Founded in April 2002, eCosCentric is the leading provider of eCos and RedBoot support, training, development and consulting services worldwide. Staffed by the original eCos creators and highly experienced embedded system and software engineers, eCosCentric provides complete solutions consisting of run-time systems and complementary host tools.

For further details visit http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecospro.shtml or contact eCosCentric for pricing and availability.

About the IEE

Founded in 1871, the IEE is the largest professional engineering society in Europe and has a worldwide membership of 120,000. The IEE represents the profession of electrical, electronic, manufacturing and systems engineering and related sciences. Acting as the voice of the profession in matters of public concern and assisting the Government to make the public aware of technological issues, the IEE sets standards of qualifications for professional engineers, accredits relevant degree courses around the world. The IEE also provides an extensive range of lectures, meetings, conferences, seminars, residential vacation schools and publications in the pursuit of engineering excellence. The institution operates a computer-assisted information service, Inspec, which has the world's largest computerised database in the English language in physics, electrotechnology, computer science and control engineering.