Green Hills Software is a privately owned company that builds

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and

programming tool A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that is used to develop another computer program, usually by helping the developer manage computer files. For example, a programmer may use a tool called a source code editor ...

s for

embedded system An embedded system is a specialized computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is e ...

s. The firm was founded in 1982 by Dan O'Dowd and Carl Rosenberg. Its headquarters are in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara (, meaning ) is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coast of the United States excepting A ...

History

In the 1990s, Green Hills Software and

Wind River Systems Wind River Systems, Inc., also known as Wind River (trademarked as Wndrvr), is an Alameda, California–based company, subsidiary of Aptiv PLC. The company develops embedded system and cloud software consisting of real-time operating systems sof ...

, both makers of embedded system software development tools, entered into a 99-year agreement to cooperatively support customers using products from both companies. The agreement was terminated after a lawsuit in 2005. After parting ways, Wind River publicly embraced

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

while Green Hills initiated a public relations campaign decrying the use of open-source software in projects related to national security. In 2008, the Green Hills

real-time operating system A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time computing applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. A RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix ...

(RTOS) named Integrity-178 was the first system to be certified by the

National Information Assurance Partnership The National Information Assurance Partnership (NIAP) is a United States government initiative to meet the security testing needs of both information technology consumers and producers that is operated by the National Security Agency (NSA), and was ...

(NIAP), composed of

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and proces ...

(NSA) and

National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into Outline of p ...

(NIST), to

Evaluation Assurance Level The Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL1 through EAL7) of an IT product or system is a numerical grade assigned following the completion of a Common Criteria security evaluation, an international standard in effect since 1999. The increasing assurance ...

(EAL) 6+. In November 2008, it was announced that a commercialized version of Integrity 178-B would be offered to the private sector by Integrity Global Security, a subsidiary of Green Hills Software. On March 27, 2012, a contract was announced between Green Hills Software and

Nintendo is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational video game company headquartered in Kyoto. It develops, publishes, and releases both video games and video game consoles. The history of Nintendo began when craftsman Fusajiro Yamauchi ...

. This designates MULTI as the official

integrated development environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a Application software, software application that provides comprehensive facilities for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source-code editor, build automation tools, an ...

and toolchain for Nintendo and its licensed developers to program the

Wii U The Wii U ( ) is a home video game console developed by Nintendo as the successor to the Wii. Released in late 2012, it is the first eighth-generation video game console and competed with Microsoft's Xbox One and Sony's PlayStation 4. The W ...

video game console A video game console is an electronic device that Input/output, outputs a video signal or image to display a video game that can typically be played with a game controller. These may be home video game console, home consoles, which are generally ...

. On February 25, 2014, it was announced that the operating system Integrity had been chosen by Urban Aeronautics for their AirMule

flying car A flying car or roadable aircraft is a type of vehicle which can function both as a road vehicle and as an aircraft. As used here, this includes vehicles which drive as motorcycles when on the road. The term "flying car" is also sometimes ...

unmanned aerial vehicle An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or unmanned aircraft system (UAS), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft with no human pilot, crew, or passengers onboard, but rather is controlled remotely or is autonomous.De Gruyter Handbook of Dron ...

(UAV), since renamed the

Tactical Robotics Cormorant The Tactical Robotics Cormorant, formerly AirMule or Mule, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) codename Pereira (shapiyriyt; ': Dragonfly), is a flying car unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) built by Tactical Robotics Ltd., a subsidiary of designer Rafi Yoel ...

Selected products

Real-time operating systems

Integrity Integrity is the quality of being honest and having a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and Honesty, truthfulness or of one's actions. Integr ...

is a

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

(RTOS). An Integrity variant, named Integrity-178B, was certified to

Common Criteria The Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (referred to as Common Criteria or CC) is an international standard (International Organization for Standardization, ISO/International Electrotechnical Commission, IEC 15408) for co ...

(EAL) 6+, High Robustness in November 2008. Micro Velosity (stylized as ''μ-velOSity'') is a real-time

microkernel In computer science, a microkernel (often abbreviated as μ-kernel) is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system (OS). These mechanisms include low-level address space management, ...

for resource-constrained devices.

Compilers

Green Hills produces

compiler In computing, a compiler is a computer program that Translator (computing), translates computer code written in one programming language (the ''source'' language) into another language (the ''target'' language). The name "compiler" is primaril ...

s for the programming languages C,

C++ C++ (, pronounced "C plus plus" and sometimes abbreviated as CPP or CXX) is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programmin ...

, Fortran, and

Ada Ada may refer to: Arts and entertainment * '' Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle'', a novel by Vladimir Nabokov Film and television * Ada, a character in 1991 movie '' Armour of God II: Operation Condor'' * '' Ada... A Way of Life'', a 2008 Bollywo ...

. They are

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

, for 32- and

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing units (CPU) and arithmetic logic units (ALU) are those that are based on processor registers, a ...

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor (computing), processor for which the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit (IC), or a small number of ICs. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, a ...

s, including

RISC-V RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. The project commenced in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. It transfer ...

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

Blackfin Blackfin is a family of 16-/32-bit microprocessors developed, manufactured and marketed by Analog Devices. The processors have built-in, fixed-point digital signal processor (DSP) functionality performed by 16-bit multiply–accumulates (MA ...

, ColdFire, MIPS,

PowerPC PowerPC (with the backronym Performance Optimization With Enhanced RISC – Performance Computing, sometimes abbreviated as PPC) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) created by the 1991 Apple Inc., App ...

SuperH SuperH (or SH) is a 32-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Hitachi and currently produced by Renesas. It is implemented by microcontrollers and microprocessors for embedded systems. At the ...

, StarCore,

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

V850 V850 is a 32-bit RISC CPU architecture produced by Renesas Electronics for embedded microcontrollers. It was designed by NEC as a replacement for their earlier NEC V60 family, and was introduced shortly before NEC sold their designs to Renesas ...

, and

XScale XScale is a microarchitecture for central processing units initially designed by Intel implementing the ARM architecture (version 5) instruction set. XScale comprises several distinct families: IXP, IXC, IOP, PXA and CE (see more below), with some ...

."Green Hills Optimizing Compilers"
Green Hills Software.

Integrated development environments

MULTI is an

(IDE) for the programming languages C,

, Embedded C++ (EC++), and

, aimed at embedded engineers. TimeMachine is a set of tools for optimizing and debugging C and C++ software. TimeMachine (introduced 2003) supports

reverse debugging A debugger is a computer program used to test and debug other programs (the "target" programs). Common features of debuggers include the ability to run or halt the target program using breakpoints, step through code line by line, and display or ...

, a feature that later also became available in the free

GNU Debugger The GNU Debugger (GDB) is a portable debugger that runs on many Unix-like systems and works for many programming languages, including Ada, Assembly, C, C++, D, Fortran, Haskell, Go, Objective-C, OpenCL C, Modula-2, Pascal, Rust, and par ...

(GDB) 7.0 (2009).

References

{{Microkernel Software companies based in California Software companies established in 1982 1982 establishments in California Companies based in Santa Barbara, California Microkernels Privately held companies based in California