Software optimises C code performance

CoWare is partnering with startup PowerEscape to distribute its power optimisation software.

CoWare is partnering with startup PowerEscape to distribute its power optimisation software.

CoWare has signed an OEM agreement with PowerEscape to sell the products globally.

PowerEscape was founded in 2003 to develop, market and sell a new generation of design tools that enable system architects, algorithm designers, and software developers to dramatically reduce power consumption and increase performance in electronic appliances and systems.

Its initial products are the first commercially available tools that enable designers to optimise the critical algorithms and software of today's electronic products for lower power.

According to Guido Arnout, President and CEO of PowerEscape: "Systems are becoming more and more software dominated.

The critical algorithms in today's digital lifestyle products start as C code.

How an algorithm interacts with memory has a large impact on power and performance, but is largely independent of how the algorithm is implemented.

The PowerEscape tools help designers optimise C code and the memory subsystem for power and performance prior to implementation into a system.

The products offer a new electronic system level (ESL) solution to a widespread problem faced by designers of consumer electronic devices.

We're pleased to be joining forces with CoWare - the leader in ESL design - to help bring this hugely important solution to designers worldwide".

"PowerEscape offers unique and significant value to all developers of performance and power critical software", said Alan Naumann, President and CEO of CoWare.

"CoWare now provides customers a focused one-stop shop for ESL design, including buses, processors, algorithms and application-specific libraries.

The PowerEscape tools are complementary to CoWare's ESL solutions, and our customers will benefit greatly from the addition of PowerEscape to CoWare's integrated design tool offering".

The PowerEscape tools analyse ANSI C code and algorithms and provide source code level feedback on memory accesses and cache hits and misses to enable algorithm designers and software developers to optimise their C code for power and performance.

The tools can help optimise algorithms originally designed in Signal Processing Worksystem (SPW) - CoWare's popular tool for the design of new algorithms.

Once an algorithm is developed in SPW, the use of the PowerEscape tools during the C coding process helps ensure high performance and low power.

Whereas the PowerEscape tools focus on power and performance in the interaction between software and the memory subsystem, the CoWare LISATek tools help design the best instructions to accelerate parts of an algorithm in a processor.

The combination of the tools leads to higher performance and lower power than each tool can reach individually.

In addition, the PowerEscape tools help identify which software parts should be accelerated in hardware or moved to a custom processor, and help determine the optimal cache and memory architecture.

Once an algorithm is optimised for power and performance, it may be "encapsulated" in SystemC for further architectural exploration and hardware refinement in ConvergenSC, CoWare's system level design tool suite.

The PowerEscape products are available immediately.

The products run on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Fedora Core, Red Hat Cygwin on Windows, Apple Mac OS X and Sun Solaris.

They require gcc 2.95 or higher.

In Japan, PowerEscape products are sold exclusively through CoWare.

In Europe and the USA, PowerEscape products are available through CoWare and PowerEscape.

Back to top