Over the past several months, Simics, a high performance virtualized software development environment from Virtutech that virtualizes the Freescale QorIQ P4080 has given the Freescale development community a head start in creating products based on the newly introduced multi-core processor. A year ago, Freescale and Virtutech jointly announced that they planned to create highly advanced simulation models for a host of current and future Freescale multi-core processors.
"As Freescale develops and delivers increasingly advanced multi-core processors, Virtutech's Simics virtual platforms play an important role in enabling our customers to initiate their proprietary software development much earlier in the process," said Henri Richard, senior vice president, chief sales and marketing officer for Freescale. "Developing such a comprehensive, optimized set of ecosystem solutions simultaneously and in advance is a milestone for the embedded industry."
“Virtutech Simics has drastically changed the development process for the entire Freescale ecosystem. Traditionally a semiconductor company waits until SoC silicon availability and evaluation board availability before developing their ecosystem. This results in a many month delay in a software solution for new devices. With Virtutech Simics, Freescale and its software partners are developing software in tandem with silicon,” said John Lambert, president and chairman of the board for Virtutech. “Not only does Virtutech enable a paradigm shift in the design of electronics systems, but Virtutech is the catalyst in shrinking the go-to-market timeline for both Freescale and its partner ecosystem. We expect millions of dollars will be generated early because of that.”
“Full-system simulation provides software developers with key benefits that include scaleable development, faster time-to-market, and higher productivity,” said Stephen D. Hendrick, Group Vice President for IDC Application Development and Deployment research. “Additionally, full system simulation can address a variety of software development lifecycle issues from design validation to virtualized testing accompanied by significant economies of scale.”
Freescale Ecosystem Feedback
“The Simics environment is a robust multi-core simulation environment that significantly eases validation of our next generation of 6WINDGate™ EDS and SDS Fast Path,” said Eric Carmès, CEO of 6WIND. “Such innovative tools are especially useful for developing and debugging networking middleware, which is tightly coupled with complex hardware architectures. Moreover, 6WIND can also provide customers with 6WINDGate™ software running on Simics Virtual Platform to speed up development and delivery of the new generation of products based on multi-core architecture thanks to system-level simulations.”
“The collaboration between Freescale, Virtutech and Wind River will truly benefit our joint customers,” said Tomas Evensen, Chief Technology Officer at Wind River. “With Virtutech Simics, we’ve been able to work hand-in-hand with Freescale on the QorIQ P4080 product development and are excited to be the only company to integrate a comprehensive software suite, including development tools, for this innovative new product.”
“By working closely with Virtutech and Freescale, and by successfully leveraging Simics in our software development efforts for Freescale’s new multi-core chip, we have been able to greatly expedite our offerings without typical expense and time constraint,” said Joerg Bertholdt, senior director of product management and marketing at MontaVista Software. “Our customers will be among the first to take advantage of the powerful capabilities of multi-core processing and capitalize on an early market competitive advantage.”
"CodeSourcery is working with Freescale to add support for the QorIQ P4080 processor to the GNU Toolchain," said Mark Mitchell, Chief Sourcerer, CodeSourcery. "As we routinely develop compilers and other tools for new CPUs before silicon is available, the existence of simulators is essential."
"Enabling the INTEGRITY RTOS and MULTI tools in advance of silicon availability helps our customers, especially for complex devices such as the QorIQ. Our mutual customers will value getting a head start on their multi-core designs,” said Dan Mender, vice president of business development at Green Hills Software.
About Virtutech
Virtutech, Inc. is a leader in product development process improvement
through virtualized software 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
and Wind River. Virtutech is an active participant in organizations to
drive adoption of VSD such as ARM Connected Community, Eclipse.org, IBM
PartnerWorld, Power.org, OSCI and Spirit Consortium. Virtutech is
headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information, visit
www.virtutech.com .
