CoWare Unveils Next-Generation, System-Centric Analysis for CoWare Platform Architect and CoWare Virtual Platform

Non-intrusive Data Collection, Powerful Eclipse-based Visualization and Meaningful System Metrics Deliver Significant Productivity Improvements to Electronic Systems Companies

SAN JOSE, Calif. – March 1, 2010 – CoWare®, Inc., the leading supplier of Electronic System Virtualization™ (ESV) software and services, today unveiled exciting new system-centric analysis in the 2010.1 release of CoWare Platform Architect and CoWare Virtual Platform. The non-intrusive data collection, powerful Eclipse-based visualization and meaningful system metrics deliver significant productivity improvements for individual developers including architects, systems designers and software developers and improve collaboration across disciplines and companies. Early users of the system-centric analysis have reported identifying and addressing design issues in a matter of hours rather than days or weeks.

“CoWare’s strategy is to deliver productivity-focused development tools supporting multi-core system design. Meaningful analysis is a cornerstone for the successful deployment of virtual platform technologies,” said Marc Serughetti, vice president of marketing and business development at CoWare. “This new capability is the result of a multi-year collaboration with key customers. The feedback from our users has been extremely positive. The system-centric analysis is delivering clear value in production to individual developers and along the electronic systems supply chain where collaboration is critical.”

The system-centric analysis works seamlessly within the standards-based SystemC simulation environment of CoWare Platform Architect and CoWare Virtual Platform and is supported by the CoWare Model Library. It combines:

• System software analysis that allows inspection and correlation of the state and history of software running on multiple cores, the respective processes on those cores and their interaction with the platform hardware. Analysis views include cache analysis, function tracing, and coverage and supports OS awareness.
• System hardware analysis enabling protocol-aware transaction-level tracing, bus path analysis (count, latency, throughput) across and inside the entire interconnect structure, bus and memory resource utilization and contention, and application task graph resource utilization and contention.

The system-centric analysis provides an extensible framework for users to tailor it to their specific needs. The primary components of the infrastructure are:

• Open APIs for easy model instrumentation, based on SystemC standards
• Non-intrusive, automatic insertion of monitors for run-time data collection 
• Run-time data reduction for efficient storage of statistical analysis
• Hierarchical database enabling fast, responsive display of TLM tracing and analysis
• Graphical chart views for multi-level visualization of tracing and analysis
• User-controllable filtering and display of graphical information and results
• Convenient Tcl scripting APIs for simulation control and creation of custom views

The integration of transaction-level models from the CoWare Model Library, independent model suppliers, and internal model development teams is smooth and easy, bringing immediate value to the design teams who deploy them in their platforms.

Availability

The 2010.1 Release of CoWare Platform Architect, CoWare Virtual Platform and the CoWare Model Library are available now.

About CoWare

CoWare is the leading global supplier of Electronic System Virtualization solutions. 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 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.