San Jose, CA — (press release excerpt) — 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. Simacs supports Linux as well as several other OSes, and is able to run realistic workloads.

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. 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 Peter S. Magnusson, president of Virtutech Inc. and renowned expert on simulation technologies. “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.”

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.

 
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