Development environment helps hunt down bugs

In addition to streamlining the software development process, Multi 5.0 makes it easier and faster than ever to find even the most difficult bugs.

Green Hills Software has announced a major new release of its Multi integrated development environment (IDE).

In development for three years, Multi 5.0 represents a quantum leap in software development tools technology.

This major release of the most successful embedded IDE in history enables enterprises to achieve total reliability, absolute security and maximum performance with the lowest manufacturing and development costs, while getting to market in record time.

In addition to streamlining the software development process, Multi 5.0 makes it easier and faster than ever to find even the most difficult bugs.

A cornerstone of the Multi 5.0 release is a major upgrade to Green Hills Software's award-winning TimeMachine suite, including "always-on" debugging: TimeMachine data is always being collected and processed in the background.

Thus, when a problem occurs, the backwards-in-time debugging capabilities and analysis tools are always at the developer's fingertips.

No extra setup or configuration is necessary.

A powerful new Pathanalyser display makes complex system execution flow easy to understand and navigate which means that finding and eradicating performance bottlenecks has never been easier.

Graphing of variable values over time is integrated with the debugger.

There is also an API library for adding custom TimeMachine data analyses, such as cache hit/miss ratios and power consumption.

In addition to TimeMachine, Multi 5.0 features a variety of new productivity-enhancing capabilities such as: DoubleCheck, a new static source code analysis tool that examines the entire application to find reliability and security flaws such as buffer overflows, resource leaks, and overly complex functions; a new distributed build system that dramatically reduces build times; and a new, ultrafast system prototyping tool that provides a powerful environment for embedded development when hardware is not yet ready or in short supply.

Other enhancements include: a new Flash programming framework optimised for ultrafast updates and ultrasmall footprint; improved code generation for the smallest and fastest code possible; a new project manager to help create and maintain with ease even the most complex applications; improved visibility and graphical management of CPU and board level hardware features; and commuter licensing.

"For 15 years, Green Hills Software has continued to enhance their Multi tools suite offering to improve the productivity and efficiency of embedded software development teams, the quality and reliability of the generated software, and improve time to market for their customers".

"Multi 5.0 continues in this tradition in offering integrated technology enhancements for improved debugging capabilities, static source code analysis, a distributed build system, and their new prototyping/fast simulator tool", commented Steve Balacco, Embedded Software Analyst for Venture Development Corporation.

With more than 10,000 users over many years, Multi is by far the most mature and proven technology for optimising embedded software development.

Among many others, companies such as Boeing, Ford, Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, Motorola, Toyota, and Qualcomm have relied on Multi for the successful development of their products.

"As software complexity has continued to increase, developers more than ever must be armed with technology that enables them to manage this complexity and bring products to market before the competition, while still meeting increasingly critical reliability and performance objectives", said Dan O'Dowd, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Green Hills Software.

"Multi 5.0 focuses specifically on the challenges of multithread and multicore debugging, on generating the smallest and fastest code, and on improving the efficiency of engineers during all phases of the software development process".

"Green Hills Software obviously has a deep understanding of the needs of software engineers, who are producing complex real-time embedded systems to tight deadlines", commented Geoff Patch, Software Engineering Manager of CEA Technologies.

"CEA has been involved in the Multi 5.0 beta test programme, and we feel that Green Hills has definitely hit the sweet spot with the powerful productivity enhancing tools provided in the new version of our favourite development environment".

Multi 5.0 supports all major 32 and 64bit processor architectures, including Power Architecture and ARM, and all major host platforms, including Windows and Linux.

Multi 5.0 will be available in Q4 2006.

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