Imperas Provides Free Access to Open Virtual Platforms Models and Imperas Software Development, Debug and Test Tools

OXFORD, England — (BUSINESS WIRE) — August 20, 2015 — Imperas™ today announced the latest results and participation in the Imperas University Program. The worldwide Imperas University Program was created to inspire and support the next generation of technologists and innovators. It grants academic and research institutions access to the tools and technology needed to prepare students to meet difficult challenges across embedded software, from development and test, to quality and standards compliance, to security and IoT. Through this program, Imperas software reaches thousands of students and professors worldwide every year. Benefits of membership in the program include access to Imperas virtual platform software, technical support, and more.

The Imperas University Program encourages participation in the embedded systems community in three ways: use on research projects, use in the classroom, and sharing of virtual platform models through the Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) Library.

Recent projects, presentations and publications by research groups include:

• MPSoCSim: “An extended OVP Simulator for Modeling and Evaluation of Network-on-Chip based heterogeneous MPSoCs,” by Philipp Wehner, Jens Rettkowski, Tobias Kleinschmidt, Diana Göhringer, Ruhr Universitat Bochum, presented at ViPES 2015.
• “ESL Power Estimation using Virtual Platforms with Black Box Processor Models,” by Stefan Schurmans, Gereon Onnebrink, Rainer Leupers, Gerd Ascheid, Xiaotao Chen, RWTH Aachen University, presented at ViPES 2015.
• “Trading-off System Load and Communication in Mapping Heuristics for Improving NoC-Based MPSoCs Reliability,” by Marcello Mandelli (PUCRS Brazil and LIRMM France), Luciano Ost (LIRMM France and University of Leicester), Gilles Sassetelli (LIRMM France) and Fernando Moraes (PUCRS Brazil), presented at ISQED 2015.
• “Communication-driven Automatic Virtual Prototyping for Network Enabled Systems,” by Liyuan Zhang, Joachim Falk, Tobias Schwarzer, Michael Glaß, and Jürgen Teich, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, presented at 17th Euromicro Conference on Digital Systems Design (DSD 2014).
• DREAMS – Distributed REal time Architecture for Mixed criticality Systems, EU project, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia.

Universities using Imperas and OVP tools and models for coursework include:

• Northeastern University, Boston, USA. Associate Professor Gunar Schirner commented, “I find Imperas tools and models invaluable for my research and my course, High Level Design of Hardware Software Systems. My students can now explore and command state-of-the-art prototyping technology for complex systems.”
• University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Professor Miroslav Popovic stated, “Using Imperas and OVP in my course on Real-Time System Programming is an immense benefit. Embedded software development is a growing need worldwide, and advanced methodologies such as Imperas delivers are required for accelerated coding and quality.”
• NTHU Taiwan. Professor Jing-Jia Liou, teaching Implementation of a Many-core System, said, “Imperas capabilities to enable both hardware and software development for multi-core designs are impressive, and allow my students to graduate with confidence that they can utilize advanced technologies essential to their future endeavors.”

Another recent milestone resulting from the Imperas University Program was Karlsruhe Institute of Technology’s release of their FlexTiles platform, a virtual platform for the FlexTiles adaptive multicore SoC program based on Imperas and Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) simulators and models. The FlexTiles platform is a self-adaptive heterogeneous multi-core 3D System-on-Chip (SoC) architecture developed by a consortium of universities, research institutes and commercial companies. The FlexTiles project has developed a high-performance, energy-efficient, programmable many-core platform with self-adaptive capabilities, along with an innovative virtualization layer and a dedicated tool flow. The project successfully used the Imperas simulation and tool technologies, with OVP models, to create a many-core virtual platform, which is available at no cost from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and from the OVP Library page for KIT.

The formal Imperas University program is just the tip of the iceberg. Students and academics from over 1,000 university departments currently subscribe to the Open Virtual Platforms website from which processor core models and OVP-based virtual platforms are freely available. These models work with the Imperas and OVP simulators, including the QuantumLeap parallel simulation accelerator, and have shown exceptionally fast performance in excess of ten billion instructions per second.