Embedded systems company Wind River Systems Inc is expected to announce the acquisition of Zinc Software Inc today. Zinc, based in Pleasant Grove, Utah, a long-time supplier of class libraries for Borland C and C++ programmers, recently expanded into the embedded systems world by signing deals with both Wind River and Integrated Systems Inc to use its ZAP Zinc Application Framework. Wind River is using the framework with its Tornado real-time development environment and VxWorks embedded operating system to give developers the means of building graphical user interfaces for embedded devices. Previously, programmers had to upgrade hardware to support full scale GUIs, or build a minimal GUI using low-level graphics primitives. The Zinc tools can result in a full scale GUI that fits into 500k of memory. The technology has been favourably compared with Microsoft Corp’s Windows Foundation Classes, and the acquisition could be interpreted as a move by Wind River to strengthen itself with technology against competition from Microsoft’s Windows CE. Zinc is now shipping version 5 of the Framework, which it offers free of charge for personal use. The eight year-old company, which is privately held and has around 20 staff, is likely to be run as an independent unit. Neither company could be reached for comment yesterday.
