CoWare Releases New Platform-Centric Software Analysis Tool to Increase Multicore Software Development Productivity

CoWare®, Inc., the leading supplier of electronic system virtualization software and services, today announced the availability of a new platform-centric software analysis development tool that targets multi-core software development. The new tool is part of the CoWare Virtual Platform product. It leads to increased productivity by accelerating and simplifying the software functional verification and optimization design tasks, resulting in faster time to market, higher software quality and reduced development costs for semiconductor and electronics companies.

Today, more than 55% of embedded developers are expected to use multi-core designs. These developers are facing an increasing number of challenges including:

• Increased complexity of the software functional verification with problems such as deadlocks, race conditions, data corruptions or processor starvation,
• Optimization of the legacy serial code bases to maximize the new capabilities provided by a multi-core platform,
• More comprehensive application integration testing due to one program causing defects to emerge in another program.

As a result, software development teams require starting their work earlier, well in advance of hardware availability, and access to more efficient debugging and analysis capabilities adapted to multi-core platforms. CoWare Virtual Platform technologies and the new platform software analysis tool deliver such unparalleled capabilities in a deterministic environment.

“Our customers are facing increasing challenges when it comes to multicore software development and are requesting solutions that accelerate software functional verification, optimization, and integration testing,” said Marc Serughetti, vice president of marketing and business development at CoWare. “The focus of virtual platform users is shifting from the simple, existing simulation technology to complete virtual platform solutions that include powerful simulation capabilities and software development tools for debugging and analysis. CoWare’s addition of a platform-centric software analysis tool will provide our customers the improved productivity they are looking for.”

The platform-centric software analysis tool is an Eclipse-based framework that provides the visibility to debug and optimize across the boundaries of processes, operating systems, cores, and hardware. It supports the configuration, acquisition and display of the acquired data. It can be made OS aware (Linux example provided) and is customizable to adapt to customer-specific analysis needs. It is available with CoWare’s 2009.1 product release. To learn more about CoWare Virtual Platform and the new platform software analysis tool:

• CoWare will be hosting a webinar “Getting Started with Virtual Platforms: A Software Developer Perspective” on Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 9:00 am PT | 12:00 pm ET | 16:00 GMT. Click here to register.
• Experience and learn about CoWare Virtual Platform capabilities through our downloadable virtual platform example. Click here for the details.

About CoWare

CoWare is the leading global supplier of electronic system virtualization software and services. IP, semiconductor, and electronics companies use CoWare virtualization solutions to design better processor- and software-intensive products faster. CoWare solutions solve the new design challenges associated with platform architecture design, platform verification, application sub-system design, processor design, DSP algorithm design, and software development, and are based on open industry standards including SystemC. These solutions also enable IP and semiconductor companies to implement more effective go-to-market strategies. CoWare’s corporate investors include ARM [(LSE:ARM); (NASDAQ:ARMHY)], Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ:CDNS), STMicroelectronics (NYSE:STM), and Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE). CoWare is headquartered in San Jose, Calif., and has offices around the world. For more information about CoWare and its products and services visit http://www.coware.com.

CoWare is a registered trademark of CoWare, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.