RTI ANNOUNCES FIRST REAL-TIME PUBLISH/SUBSCRIBE NETWORKING SYSTEM

NDDS Release 1.11 implements true, real-time, many-to-many communications model

SUNNYVALE, CA, (January 12, 1998) -- The newest release of the first networking system designed expressly for complex real-time communications was announced today by Real-Time Innovations, Inc. (RTI). The product will be demonstrated at the RTI booth # 424 at the Real-Time Computing Show and Conference in San Jose, CA, January 21 and 22.

The Network Data Delivery Service (NDDS), introduced in 1995, facilitates development and implementation of real-time distributed applications. It lets many diverse nodes communicate easily without network programming. It also eliminates the need for programmers to configure servers, process connections, handle failures, and react to network changes. NDDS excels at systems with repetitive, time-critical data flows.

Release 1.11 of NDDS adds multicast support, reliable communications modeling, and integrated client/server transactions to the rich feature set of earlier versions of the product.

According to Stan Schneider, CEO of RTI, "An application that would have taken thousands of lines of network or RPC code can now be done with a few subscription and production declarations."

NDDS is designed for industrial and research applications, including distributed control, remote sensing, monitoring, and distributed simulation and animation. It is fully compliant with Wind River Systems' VxWorks, Windows NT, Windows95 and UNIX on most platforms.

NDDS Technical Details

NDDS is the first dissemination architecture designed expressly for real-time communications (see below). It offers a true, real-time model, including update guarantees and deadlines. It supports both best efforts data delivery, for time-critical data, and reliable communications for commands and event messages.

The product allows network nodes to subscribe to data items by name. Whenever another node publishes a new value for the item, each subscriber is immediately updated. According to Dr. Gerardo Pardo-Castellote, NDDS's chief architect, this approach is more flexible and robust than existing solutions. It supports multiple producers of the same data and is fully symmetric, thereby preventing bottlenecks and avoiding single points of failure. Moreover, it permits much faster development, and results in simpler, more modular applications.

New Features in Release 1.11

Multicast Support. Multicast facilitates high-bandwidth communications. A single message packet is simultaneously delivered to many consumers. Users can seamlessly combine unicast and multicast subscriptions to minimize network load and enable high-speed traffic.

Integrated Client/Server. NDDS applications can now combine the best features of publish/subscribe and client/server communications.

Reliable communications. The reliable communications model guarantees delivery for both subscriptions and clients requests.

Background: Publish/Subscribe Architectures

The simplest -- and earliest -- network architecture was point-to-point; essentially one-to-one communications. The 1980s saw the development of client/server architectures, allowing one server to connect simultaneously to many clients.

Publish/Subscribe architectures, which have been coming into widespread use since the mid-'90s, support many-to-many communications. Such architectures are best for distributed, time-critical information flow. Nodes "publish" data into the network, and "subscribe" to data from the network. Producers and consumers are anonymous; neither knows where the data comes from or goes to. Each time an item is products, NDDS distributes it to all subscribers.

Real-Time Innovations, Inc. (RTI), a 1991 spin-off from Stanford University, is a leading developer of new tools and architectures for the growing real-time software market. The company's products help real-time developers analyze and understand embedded systems, speed development of distributed real-time systems, and coordinate the work of teams of programmers developing large projects. The company's products are currently used in thousands of sites worldwide.

For more information, contact Real-Time Innovations, Inc. at 155A Moffett Park Drive, Suite 111, Sunnyvale, CA 94089. Phone: (408) 720-8312. FAX: (408) 734-5009. World Wide Web site at http://www.rti.com.

###