Getting Started with Virtual Platforms:
A Software Developer Perspective

Estimated Length: 1 hour

Overview:
The ability to debug and analyze software defects efficiently is a key requirement in order to complete a software project successfully and on time. Especially when porting legacy software such as an OS or migrating sequential code to multi-core platforms, powerful debugging tools and methods are indispensable. This one hour webinar gives a technical overview and various practical examples on the usage of virtual platforms for debugging. Virtual platforms enable a whole new world of software analysis and debugging solutions. An OS-aware software analysis framework eases the understanding of the history and interaction between multiple parallel software stacks. The controllability and visibility of virtual platforms enables engineers to trigger and analyze multi-processing defects such as dead-locks and race conditions. Correctness and performance of complex shared-memory communication, task scheduling and control can be asserted which results in a significant quality and productivity gain for the software engineer.

What you will learn:

• Overview of the debugging infrastructure provided by a virtual platform
• Practical examples for applying virtual platforms for embedded software debugging based on real world software and hardware configurations
• How the OS-aware analysis and debug framework can be used and customized to debug typical problems that appear during OS porting
• How domain integration problems in an asymmetric, multi-processing platform can be identified
• How virtual platforms can be used to debug shared memory communication problems based on a multi-core video driver
• How virtual platforms can be used to spot an existing bug in the Linux kernel for the ARM11 MPcore configuration

Presenter: Achim Nohl, Principal Solution Specialist, CoWare, Inc.

Achim Nohl is a Principal Solution Specialist for CoWare’s Virtual Platform and Processor Design solutions. As one of the main inventors of the LISATek technology, he was leading the research and development of the CoWare Processor Designer product line at CoWare until 2006. In the last two years, Mr. Nohl has taken over the technical lead for the definition of virtual platform-based software development solutions at CoWare. In 2000, he received his Diploma degree in Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Integrated Signal Processing Systems in Aachen, Germany.

About CoWare:
CoWare is the leading global supplier of platform-driven electronic system-level (ESL) design software and services. IP, semiconductor, and electronics companies use CoWare ESL 2.0 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’s corporate investors include ARM [(LSE: ARM); (NASDAQ: ARMHY)], Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ: CDNS), STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM), and Sony Corporation (NYSE: SNE). 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.