System tackles multiple cores in embedded designs

Wind Power ICE is described as the industry's first true solution for developing and debugging heterogeneous multiprocessing and multicore embedded applications.

Wind Power ICE is described as the industry's first true solution for developing and debugging heterogeneous multiprocessing and multicore embedded applications.

Wind Power ICE enables developers to quickly and easily get products to market that combine several processors in a single system or several processing cores on a single piece of silicon.

Developers now have a single tool for performing critical test and debug functions with these "distributed computing" designs, delivering improved performance and significant time-to-market benefits.

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics is currently using Wind Power ICE technology to develop software for the vehicle systems component of the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) project, which includes flight controls and test set support.

"The ability to develop software for multiprocessor designs will make the effort of testing and debugging the flight control and flight support systems for the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) project much easier and quicker than other products that only provide a single processor solution", said Elisha Graham, Vehicle Systems Processing test station software lead for Lockheed Martin Aeronautics.

Until now, developers of products implementing multicore designs have had to use cumbersome and time-consuming processes to debug, develop and test individual components of their systems.

Through Wind River's innovative new JTAGServer technology, Wind Power ICE provides the capability to simultaneously or individually debug code on one or more CPUs of the same or dissimilar architecture, whether they are individual components or embedded within an SoC, using a single tool.

At the same time developers are debugging CPUs, Wind Power ICE can also download field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), program complex programmable logic devices (CPLDs), or control any type of silicon device.

"Our customers are increasingly turning to multiprocessing and multicore designs due to the enormous performance benefits offered.

But debugging these systems has historically been complex and arduous", said Tony Tryba, vice president and general manager of Wind River's Embedded Technologies business unit.

"Wind Power ICE delivers a new paradigm in multicore system development, simplifying product design and shortening development cycles for virtually any multicore or distributed processing configuration".

In addition to multicore development, Wind Power ICE addresses the entire product development cycle, from board bring-up to debug and production test.

Wind Power ICE supports multiple debug sessions such that a single user can debug multiple CPUs simultaneously or multiple developers can debug multiple, even unrelated, devices in a system - all through a single connection and one piece of external hardware.

An open API allows integration of powerful capabilities into users' own custom environments, and allows fast and flexible integration of Wind Power ICE with other tools in the development environment.

Other features include high-speed JTAG run control and program download, on-chip debug target control, built-in hardware diagnostics, Flash memory programming, external triggering, source-level debugging, internal register configuration, remote firmware update via Web server, and more.

This technology is integrated with Wind River's popular visionClick source-level debugger, which can be used as the software interface for Wind Power ICE.

Wind Power ICE is also supported by Wind River's next-generation integrated development environment, the Wind Power IDE - a complete IDE for hardware bring-up and embedded application development.

Wind Power ICE is currently available for beta customers on select architectures and will be fully available later this year.

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