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Virtutech Announces Simics 1.0 Full System Simulation Platform
San Jose, CA- February 19, 2002 - Virtutech, Inc., today announced the release of Virtutech® Simics 1.0, the first commercially available full system simulation platform. Able to simulate complete computer and digital systems at the instruction-set level, Simics is designed to substantially raise quality, reduce risk, and improve time-to-market during the design, development, and testing phases. Simics is the result of over a decade of research and active collaboration with top universities and industry-leading companies such as Sun Microsystems, AMD, Compaq, Ericsson, and Hewlett-Packard.
Virtutech Announces Simics 1.0 Full System Simulation Platform
San Jose, CA- February 19, 2002 - Virtutech, Inc., today announced the release of Virtutech® Simics 1.0, the first commercially available full system simulation platform. Able to simulate complete computer and digital systems at the instruction-set level, Simics is designed to substantially raise quality, reduce risk, and improve time-to-market during the design, development, and testing phases. Simics is the result of over a decade of research and active collaboration with top universities and industry-leading companies such as Sun Microsystems, AMD, Compaq, Ericsson, and Hewlett-Packard.
Full system simulation represents a powerful, new methodology for software and hardware engineering," said Peter S. Magnusson, President of Virtutech, Inc. and renowned expert on simulation technologies. The Virtutech Simics simulation platform is the first generally available product of its kind."
The increasing complexity of digital systems, ranging from consumer electronics to high-end computer servers, is challenging traditional tools and techniques. Full system simulation provides a promising path forward, providing value from early architectural design, through hardware/software co-development and quality assurance.
And whereas 'embedded' has long been synonymous with 'low-end', ever-increasing capabilities in processors, memory, and magnetic media provide room for more software and complexity. This leads to embedded systems increasingly facing challenges similar to those historically present in the design of high-end servers and telecommunications systems.
Historically, end-users have demonstrated an almost insatiable appetite for features," said Mr. Magnusson. This will place large software footprints into more and more systems, together with increased demands on reliability and serviceability. Full system simulation is one of the key technologies that have been used for many years to build such complex systems."
Simics' innovative technology was recently recognized as a Best of Comdex Finalist in the New Technology category at Comdex Fall 2001, as well as being awarded the prestigious Swedish Golden Mouse Award.
About Simics
Virtutech Simics is a full system simulation platform that provides a controlled, deterministic, and fully virtualized environment. It simulates both uniprocessor and multiprocessor systems, and offers sufficient speed and fidelity to boot and run unmodified operating systems and realistic workloads for a variety of computer architectures. Unlike any other development platform, Simics offers a hybrid combination of a traditional debugger, CAD tool, and cross-platform emulator.
Simics models dozens of processor types and associated peripheral devices, including systems based on Alpha, PowerPC, SPARC, IA32 (x86), and x86-64 Hammer" CPUs, as well as IA-64 (Itanium), ARM and MIPS which are currently under development. Simics is the only simulator on the market today that has sufficient speed and fidelity to simulate high-performance systems based on Windows XP, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, and VxWorks, and is able to run realistic workloads.
As an example, AMD has adopted Simics/Hammer as the development platform for the Hammer program, allowing significant software development to be performed prior to the availability of the physical processor. Simics/Hammer simulates AMD's forthcoming 64-bit Hammer" chip (x86-64), and runs over 100 times faster than previously available simulators. The speed is very impressive, the command-line interface is great, and we can now run tests using scripts, which allow us to finish a whole test suite in less than half an hour. I am very impressed [with Simics]," said Andreas Jaeger, x86-64 project manager at SuSE Labs, a leading Linux software development company that is porting software to the Hammer processor.
As a full system simulator, Simics provides a common infrastructure for a broad variety of tasks, including: microprocessor design; memory hierarchy design; component development and testing; automated software quality testing; and the development of firmware, drivers, and operating systems. Exceptionally fast, Simics can easily add new components and leverage older ones within a practical abstraction level. It offers a platform with a rich API and a powerful scripting environment with symbolic and performance debugging features. Simics is ideally suited to offer compelling value during the architectural and hardware/software co-design phases. Traditionally, a team developing a digital system would first develop the hardware, and then the software team would write the software. Using Simics, software engineers can quickly develop a simulation model of the complete system, and begin to work in parallel with the hardware group. As a result, the teams will have more flexibility to make hardware/software trade-off decisions, be able to start the software development efforts sooner, and improve the overall quality of the final product while reducing time to market.
Simics is also capable of simulating clusters and networks of systems. Simics Central, a key component of the Simics platform, allows the simulation of complete networks by connecting multiple Simics processes together, all within a single, virtual clock domain. Simics allows one to create a powerful test bench that can test system characteristics that normally cannot be accomplished, or is difficult to perform, through hardware. One can test for reliability, performance, and fault tolerance all within a virtualized environment. Because myriad conditions can be easily modeled within Simics, it is feasible to introduce any combination of complex failures that one may wish to explore. Systems are becoming more networked than before, driven largely by the Internet revolution," said Mr. Magnusson. Simics is unique in offering the ability to simulate entire, realistically-scaled distributed applications ranging from multiplayer games to mission-critical financial services."
The pricing of Simics configurations starts at approximately $25,000 dollars.
About Virtutech
Virtutech is the world leader in the design and development of full system simulation platforms. Based on over a decade of R&D and close collaboration with leading universities and systems companies, Simics, Virtutech's core product, can simulate high-performance computer and digital systems and can substantially raise quality, reduce risk and improve time-to-market during the design, development, and testing phases. Customers include AMD, Compaq, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems, as well as a number of top universities in the U.S. and Europe, such as MIT, Carnegie-Mellon University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Founded in 1998 as a spin-off from the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), Virtutech is a privately held company with headquarters located in Stockholm, Sweden and sales and support offices in Silicon Valley. For more information, call (408) 879-2606 or visit the company's Web site at http://www.virtutech.com.
Simics is a trademark of Virtutech AB. Virtutech is a registered trademark of Virtutech AB.
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For more information, please contact:
Peter Magnusson, President, Virtutech Inc.,
tel (US) 408-879-2616
(SE) +46 (0)8-690 07 21, e-mail: psm@virtutech.com
Niklas Rudemo, CEO,
tel +46 (0)8-690 07 27
e-mail: niklas@virtutech.com
Corporate headquarter:
Virtutech AB, Norrtullsgatan 15
SE-113 27 Stockholm, Sweden
tel +46 (0)8-690 07 20, fax +46 (0)8-690 07 29
U.S. sales office:
Virtutech, Inc.
1999 S. Bascom Ave, Suite 700
Campbell, CA 95008
tel: 408-879-2606
fax: 408-879-6202
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