Virtio Delivers Virtual Platform for Texas Instruments' New OMAP2430 Processor

VPOM-2430 Virtual Platform Enables Hardware/Software Co-Development, Accelerating Time-to-Market for 2.5G and 3G Phones

CAMPBELL, CA-December 5, 2005-Virtio Corporation, creator of Virtual Platforms for embedded software development, today extended its Virtual Platform's offering with the VPOM-2430 Virtual Platform modeling Texas Instruments' new OMAP2430 processor and software development platform, which will provide improved multimedia performance for 2.5G and 3G handsets and beyond. The VPOM-2430 Virtual Platform delivers a full system simulation prior to the availability of the actual platform, enabling wireless system designers and software developers to begin development of their end-user systems and software immediately.

Virtio's Virtual Platforms deliver system-level development environments months before an actual development system is ready. Also, Virtual Platforms provide a high level of system visibility though breakpointing and single-stepping inside peripheral hardware models for superior control and visibility. The VPOM-2430 Virtual Platform is a complete simulation of TI's OMAP2430 processor, including the imaging, video and audio, graphics and camera subsystems, as well as memory and a full set of ports such as camera, USB, serial, Ethernet and MMC.

The graphics subsystem incorporates the IVA 2 accelerator, TI's next-generation imaging video and audio engine, enabling system designers to have access to a full simulation of the accelerator capabilities before hardware becomes available. This feature allows developers to efficiently transition from TI's first-generation IVA accelerator to the new IVA 2 technology and benefit from this technology today. This virtual platform allows control of the power management hardware and provides detailed insight into the interaction of the power-management services of an operating system with the OMAP2430 hardware. Developers can visualize the applied system voltage scaling over time through advanced time graphs and can verify that desired power states have been invoked or implemented correctly by detailed logging of all power events.

Virtio offers two product packages for VPOM-2430, a standard Virtual Platform and a Platform Development Kit (PDK). With the Virtual Platform, a developer can create and test new software configurations to boot operating systems, run applications or develop low-level drivers. The Platform Development Kit offers the added ability to customize the board-level platform by using the included authoring tools. This environment provides the flexibility to quickly add and delete peripheral models and board components.

Once hardware is available, Virtual Platforms continues to provide visibility into hardware and software at later stages of design. Debugging with a Virtio Virtual Platform is more efficient than JTAG allowing the software developer to stop all cores with each breakpoint which greatly increases their heterogeneous multi-core debugging productivity.

"Virtual Platforms allow system and software designers to make critical decisions on software architecture and system configuration earlier in the development cycle," explained Filip Thoen, chief technical officer of Virtio. "The VPOM-2430 is unique in that it enables these designers to create and test their systems before the hardware and development platform becomes available. It allows them to do true hardware/software co-development along with hardware and software integration. In addition, this latest platform contains Virtio's most advanced features in terms of heterogeneous multi-core debugging as well as power modeling and power estimation."

TI drives advanced mobile phone video and imaging to the next level with the new OMAP2430 processor. The OMAP2430 processor boosts multimedia performance for downloadable media playback, digital video playback, still image capture and video teleconferencing. This platform will enable a new round of innovation in the design of 2.5G, 3G, WLAN and WiMAX products.

"Virtio's Virtual Platforms enable our internal software development teams to begin developing, verifying and delivering software to our customers prior to silicon and development platform availability which shortens software development cycles," said Avner Goren, Texas Instruments' director of Marketing, Cellular Systems.

Pricing and Availability

Virtio's VPOM-2430 Virtual Platform starts at $1990 USD for a single user license and is available immediately.

About Virtio

Virtio powers dramatic gains in software development by delivering early access to fast, full-function software emulation of embedded devices. Virtio is based in Campbell, California in the U.S.A with development centers at Campbell, the Alba Centre, Livingston, Scotland and Moscow, Russia. Additional information about Virtio is available at www.virtio.com.