“Simics support for the RMI XLR MIPS64 multithreading processor cores enables developers to create fast, virtual models of complex RMI-based platforms that can connect with additional boards and complete racks of equipment across standard networks,” said Mark Litvack, director of business development, RMI. “Simics’ ability to model the full system accelerates product development and integration while removing the dependency of hardware availability – both important factors for today’s mixed platform designs.”
By virtualizing complex, mixed architecture systems combined with features such as speed, checkpointing, reverse execution and dynamic configuration, Simics allows engineers to adopt a virtualized systems development approach, resulting in faster product definition, development and deployment in comparison to traditional hardware centric approaches.
“Fusing Tensilica’s software tools and components with Simics capabilities enables earlier integration of Tensilica’s IP into the customer’s product,” said Chris Jones, director of strategic alliances, Tensilica, Inc. “Simics now allows customers to integrate Xtensa cores into the virtual system giving developers a level of visibility, control and repeatability that is simply unavailable within a physical hardware environment. The result is faster delivery of products to market and a significant impact on the bottom line.”
Simics supports semiconductor manufacturers and their customers in high-performance computing, aerospace and defense, telecommunications and networking industries. With the addition of RMI XLR MIPS64 and Tensilica Xtensa support, Virtutech’s library of supported processors now expands to 42 across eight processor and DSP families, each complemented by off-the-shelf models for hundreds of individual devices, boards, and system components.
“The support of Tensilica and RMI ensures that our customers will have a rich solution for market-leading CPUs and cores as they design and deploy heterogeneous, multi-core and multiprocessor systems,” said Michel Genard, vice president of marketing for Virtutech, Inc. “The rapid growth and adoption of virtualized systems development by semiconductor manufacturers and their customers shows that traditional hardware-based development processes do not scale for today’s complex software-based systems, multicore architectures and aggressive schedules. With Simics, it is no longer necessary to wait until the hardware is available before defining, developing and deploying key OS, applications and systems software.”
For further information, Virtutech executives will be available at the DAC conference taking place at the Moscone Center in San Francisco from Sunday, July 26 through Friday, July 31, 2009. Jakob Engblom, technical marketing manager, and Ross Dickson, principal technology specialist, both from Virtutech, will be discussing a jointly authored paper in the session, “ Design Flow for Embedded System Device Driver Development and Verification,” on Tuesday, July 28, from 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., in room 132. Engblom will also be participating in the panel, “The Wild West: Conquest of Complex Hardware-Dependent Software Design,” on Thursday, July 30, from 4:30 p.m. – 6:00 p.m, in room 131.
About Simics
Simics is a high performance full-system simulator that enables engineers to develop, debug, test and run their entire software application stack on a virtual representation of their target hardware, or “virtual platform”. The overall engineering development efforts are reduced through advanced capabilities normally not available with physical hardware: non-invasive debugging and tracing, saving and later resuming execution, full deterministic behavior, built-in networking capabilities, forward and reverse execution, ability to examine, control, and break on any internal device and to inject faults, and the ability to save system state and later replay it. Simics runs unmodified production-quality binaries and can be used with third party software development tools.
About Virtutech
Virtutech, Inc. is the leader in product development process improvement
through virtualized systems development (VSD). Virtutech Simics® allows
for a revolutionary change in the product development process at a full
system level rather than a component level and is the only commercial
solution that delivers the four most important criteria for successful
deployment of hardware virtualization in the electronics equipment
development process: speed, scalability, model availability, and
control. Simics customers report reduced time to market, better project
risk management, lower capital expenditure, product development cost and
maintenance as well as increased quality and individual productivity.
Virtutech serves the needs of the world’s leading OEMs in the
high-performance computing, aerospace and defense, telecommunications,
networking and semiconductor industries. Customers include Cisco,
Ericsson, Freescale Semiconductor, GE Avionics, Honeywell, IBM, Lockheed
Martin, Nortel, Northrop Grumman, MontaVista Software and Wind River.
Virtutech is an active participant in organizations to drive adoption of
VSD such as ARM Connected Community, Eclipse.org, IBM PartnerWorld,
Multicore Association, Power.org, OSCI and Spirit Consortium. Virtutech
is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information, visit
www.virtutech.com .
