THAME, United Kingdom, May 24, 2010 – Imperas today announced a flow with Mentor Graphics Corporation (Nasdaq: MENT) focused on enabling more productive and higher quality embedded software development with the Mentor Graphics® Nucleus Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) and the Mentor Embedded™ software tools. With firmware and application software development taking the majority of the resources for developing embedded, creating new flows for embedded software is increasingly important. The Imperas flow with Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division (ESD) tools, including the Mentor Nucleus RTOS and EDGE products, makes it easier to use the Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) open source models for the development of embedded systems.
The initial result of this flow is the release of free reference virtual platforms by Imperas based on ARM and MIPS processor cores, running the Mentor Nucleus RTOS. These reference virtual platforms are available from the Open Virtual Platforms (OVP) website, www.OVPworld.org/Nucleus. The reference virtual platforms constructed from OVP open source models make it easy for embedded systems developers to use these platforms as a starting point for building their own virtual platforms. A compiled version of the Mentor Nucleus RTOS running on the reference platforms is available for demonstration. Developers interested in using the Nucleus product will need to get a license from Mentor.
“Embedded software is the key differentiator for today’s products and we need to make it easier for people to develop embedded systems,” said Glenn Perry, general manager of Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. “Virtual platforms are one way to accelerate software development, and we are excited that Imperas has provided a flow that enables users to run Nucleus RTOS and EDGE on OVP reference platforms.”
A virtual platform is a set of models and a simulation engine that enables the same software binaries that would run on the hardware to be executed on a software, or virtual, platform. Because instruction-accurate models do not require the full implementation details of the hardware, they can be more easily and quickly developed, enabling software development to start months before any hardware is available. In addition, software development on virtual platforms offers the benefit of simulation of any system: full visibility and controllability, unlike the limited access that hardware provides as a software development environment. Further benefits of virtual platforms include real-time simulation speed of hundreds of millions of instructions per second, and deterministic behavior, enabling simulation runs to be repeated.
“Just as we cannot imagine developing hardware without using simulation, software simulation, or virtual platforms, are moving into the mainstream of embedded software development for SoCs (systems on chips),” said Simon Davidmann, president and CEO, Imperas and founding director of the OVP initiative. “Making it easier to get started with virtual platforms by releasing reference platforms with the most popular operating systems such as Nucleus RTOS provides great value to the OVP and embedded systems communities.”
About Imperas (www.Imperas.com)
For more information about Imperas, please go to the Imperas website.
About the Open Virtual Platforms Initiative (www.OVPworld.org)
For more information about OVP, please go to the About OVP page on the OVP website. Detailed quotations regarding OVP are available from http://www.ovpworld.org/newsblog/?p=42.
Mentor Graphics and Nucleus are registered trademarks and Mentor Embedded is a trademark of Mentor Graphics Corporation. MIPS, Malta and MIPS-Based are trademarks or registered trademarks in the United States and other countries of MIPS Technologies, Inc. Imperas acknowledges trademarks or registered trademarks of other organizations for their respective products and services.
