DoubleWide has changed its name to Accenia, and is shipping the second version of its embedded systems virtualization software. DoubleWide Studio 2.0 offers better performance, flexibility, and ease of use, the company says, and will enable hardware and software developers to work together more closely.

According to Accenia, DoubleWide Studio 2.0 can be used to create and test software before hardware prototypes are available. The software can virtualize individual chips, complex devices, or even networks of interconnected systems, the company claims.

Accenia says Studio includes a library containing virtual representations of “leading-edge chips,” such as Broadcom's StrataXGS BCM56500 family of gigabit Ethernet and 10 gigabit Ethernet switch-on-a-chips. DoubleWide Studio also includes a framework customers can use to create virtual representions of their own chips. Virtualized components can be combined into functional systems, which in turn can be combined into virtual networks that can interact within themselves or with external tools such as packet generators or protocol verification suites, the company says.

Accenia says DoubleWide Studio can reduce the number of hardware prototypes required to complete embedded projects, as well as the amount of hardware test equipment. It can help geographically distributed teams work more effectively. And, it enables developers to use existing enterprise software development tools to execute test suites on their individual workstations, the company says.

VDC's embedded software practice director, Chris Lanfear, said, “Accenia is on the right track for improving the software development lifecycle.”

Accenia formed a partnership with Linux distributor MontaVista in March of 2003, and hired EDA (electronic design automation) industry veteran Jim Bailey as CEO last May (Bailey has since been replaced by William Miskovetz). The company recently made mention on Gartner's 2005 list of “cool vendors” in the application development market.

Competitor Virtio announced last week plans to port its circuit board simulation technology to Linux, saying that since hardware design tools typically run under Linux, a Linux port will facilitate closer integration between hardware and software development teams.

Availability

DoubleWide Studio 2.0 is available now for Red Hat Linux, Sun Solaris, and Microsoft Windows hosts, and support for a range of embedded target operating systems, including MontaVista Linux and Wind River Systems VxWorks.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.