Wind River®, a world leader in embedded and mobile software, has introduced the latest version of Wind River Simics which features a quick start capability allowing embedded developers to easily and immediately benefit from using full system simulation when developing, debugging, and testing software.
Wind River Simics now includes Quick Start Platform (QSP), which provides a synthetic virtual platform coupled with an instruction set simulator for specific architectures. QSP is also bundled with board support packages (BSPs) for VxWorks® and Linux, including additional BSPs planned for the latest versions of Wind River Linux, which makes for a convenient development platform for developers, especially those creating user-level application software not tied to the specifics of the target hardware.
“Using simulation provides significant savings in total cost of ownership and time, especially when working on complex systems. Wind River Simics not only enables application development to begin earlier but can also help determine the most appropriate system designs and ease hardware migration,” said Michel Genard, vice president of tools and lifecycle solutions at Wind River. “With Wind River Simics, developers can get hands-on experience and take advantage of virtual platforms and simulation techniques much sooner.”
While industry research has indicated growth in the adoption of virtual system prototyping and simulation tools, timely project completion rates are still a challenge, especially for complex projects.(1) Wind River Simics provides a fast and easy jump start for developers, and in turn, helping to further encourage adoption of simulation.
By using Wind River Simics right away, developers can immediately benefit from capabilities such as reverse execution and checkpointing. In reverse execution, the ability to back up and redo program runs allows for close and repeated examination of a run, producing the same results each time. Repeatability and reversibility are valuable in the development and debugging of complex software, and are capabilities not possible with a physical machine. Checkpoints provide a precise snapshot of an entire system’s state. A software tester can alert developers to a bug by taking a checkpoint and passing it along so they can resume execution precisely from the perspective of the tester.
As a full system simulator, Wind River Simics can simulate any target hardware system, from a single processor board, a multi-core system or an entire system containing hundreds of boards with different architectures. Unmodified target software binaries can run on a Simics simulation as if on the actual physical hardware.
About Wind River
Wind River, a wholly owned subsidiary of Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC), is a world leader in embedded and mobile software. Wind River has been pioneering computing inside embedded devices since 1981 and its technology is found in more than 1 billion products. Wind River is headquartered in Alameda, Calif., with offices in more than 20 countries. To learn more, visit Wind River at www.windriver.com or on Facebook.
(1) VDC Research, Analyst Blog, Virtual Platforms – White Knight or Red Herring?, September 7, 2010
Wind River is a trademark or registered trademark of Wind River Systems, Inc. and its affiliates. Other names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.