When it comes to network acceleration, Wind River (News - Alert) has certainly made a name for itself as one of the leaders in the space. And with a number of announcements regarding partnerships, new products and advancements to the company’s impressive portfolio of network acceleration tools, Wind River has quite a successful year to look back on and much to look forward to in 2012. Here are some of the most noteworthy stories released by the company in 2011.

In terms of its largest advancements, Wind River announced new versions of its Linux 4 platform and Network Acceleration platform. Wind River Linux 4 is a commercial embedded Linux runtime and development platform and is the first Linux to provide a fully integrated graphics software stack for the latest Intel and Texas Instruments’ (News - Alert) processors.

The latest version of Wind River’s network acceleration platform was designed to deliver ultrafast networking performance for network infrastructure equipment. The multi-core acceleration enables greater performance with the addition of packet acceleration for higher level protocols including Layer 4 transport protocols such as UDP and TCP. The new release expands hardware support for Freescale (News - Alert) QorIQ and Intel Xeon next-generation multi-core processors. The multi-core silicon support allows network performance to scale efficiently with the number of cores in a processor.

In addition, the company also expanded its portfolio in the IP services space with a product series of smart gateway solutions. Wind River Platform for Gateways provides a platform equipment manufacturers can use to develop gateways that manage connected devices and services at the network edge. Smart gateways enable operators and service providers to configure, manage, diagnose, support and deliver services more efficiently and intelligently, according to Wind River.  Smart gateways also allow consumers to monitor and manage home automation and multimedia systems, as well as music streaming and entertainment services.

Most recently, to close out the 2011 calendar year, Wind River formed a pact with Infineon to expand its integrated software tools for Tricore Microcontrollers. Together, the partnership will help to expand the integrated software toolset that is part of Wind River’s Diab Compiler for the TriCore microcontroller architecture of Infineon Technologies (News - Alert), which includes the AUDO MAX and TriCore families. In addition, Wind River also released an update to its Diab Compiler to deliver enhanced performance for TriCore developers

Stay tuned to Wind River’s Network Acceleration Channel, exclusively on TMCnet, as the company continues to roll out advancements to their portfolio as well as new products and partnerships in the New Year.

Stefanie Mosca is a Managing Editor for TMCnet, with a particular focus in wireless technologies as well as mobile and IP communications. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Quinnipiac University and a bachelor's degree in communication from the University of New Haven. To read more of her articles, please visit her columnist page or follow her on Twitter (News - Alert) @stefaniemosca.

Edited by Chris DiMarco