Wind River leads in multicore device development

ALAMEDA, USA: Wind River, a global leader in Device Software Optimization (DSO), announced the immediate availability of Wind River ICE 2, a high-performance hardware emulator designed to improve debugging efficiency during the device development lifecycle. The company also announced an add-on module to ICE 2, called Wind River Trace 2, which will provide developers with better visibility into hardware and software interactions.

Wind River ICE 2 simplifies uniprocessor and multicore system development challenges by enabling device software developers to visualize complex system interactions and rapidly track down the root cause to resolve problems with greater efficiency. In addition, ICE 2 addresses industry challenges of scalability by allowing simple migration from one processor family to another via firmware upgrades, allowing developers to leverage existing investments.

“As uniprocessor and multicore systems become more complex, device debugging tools also must scale and enable device developers to simplify their debugging experience and improve their productivity,” said Tomas Evensen, CTO at Wind River. “Wind River ICE 2 is built on a high-performance platform to support a range of upcoming system-on-a-chip solutions, allowing customers to remain ahead of the latest upgrades, features and enhancements well into the future.”

Wind River ICE 2 provides advanced remote support and simultaneous debugging of up to 16 cores. The Wind River ICE 2 efficiently uses JTAG (Joint Test Action Group) bandwidth to achieve faster run-control and faster downloads. Additional key product features and benefits of ICE 2 include:

* Expanded support for new multicore system-on-a-chip processor families and devices including the 1 to 16-core Cavium OCTEON Multi-core Processor Family, and Freescale multicore processors based on Power Architecture technology (such as MPC55xx, MPC8572, MPC8640 and MPC8641D), as well as Freescale's recently announced QorIQ Communications Platforms.

* Comprehensive hardware and memory diagnostic capabilities enable quick and effective diagnosis of system-level hardware layout issues.

* Complete integration with Wind River Workbench, On-Chip Debugging Edition, the industry’s leading Eclipse-based on-chip debugging environment.

* Ability to manage connections with 128 devices on the same scan chain.

* Ongoing support for industry leading operating systems, including VxWorks and Wind River Linux.

* Enables developers to identify and resolve complex system-level multicore or multi-processor hardware to software integration issues, extended to support the debugging of up to 16 cores simultaneously through one Wind River ICE 2 emulator.

* Introduction of a LCD panel for easy configuration, set-up and monitoring.

* Hardware debug accessibility for developers located in remote sites through the inclusion of a port that communicates information from the device to a target console, independently of the user’s physical location.

“It is critical to have development tools that simplify multicore development and scale to meet diverse customer needs,” said Raghib Hussain, chief technology officer and vice president, software engineering at Cavium. “Wind River is demonstrating leadership in the area of multicore development with the introduction of its new hardware emulator to contribute to increased developer productivity and shorter development cycles.”

“Companies are constantly seeking debugging tools that have the capability to seamlessly scale and ensure the most efficient, cost effective overall performance, especially in the context of multicore architectures,” said Ian Forsyth, senior enablement multicore architect at Freescale. “Wind River ICE 2 is ideally suited for Freescale multicore processors with its rich feature set and comprehensive multicore support. Our long history of collaboration with Wind River across multiple product lines, which include the PowerQUICC processors, Power Architecture processors, iMX and recently announced QorIQ communication platforms, shows the trust we place in their technology to accelerate device time-to-market.”

Availability

Wind River ICE 2 is immediately available as a stand-alone solution or packaged with Wind River Workbench for On-Chip Debugging and API. Wind River Trace 2 will be available in the third quarter of 2008.