SAN JOSE, California, September 7, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- CriticalBlue, a pioneer in embedded multicore software analysis, exploration and verification tools, announced today immediate support for the Dual V850E2M Core architecture by Renesas Electronics Corporation , the world's number one supplier of microcontrollers, within CriticalBlue's Prism product. Software developers will now be able to analyze their existing software applications and quickly assess the tangible benefits of migrating to Dual V850E2M Core platforms.

This announcement continues the deepening of Prism capabilities to enable leading multicore vendors such as Renesas Electronics to provide an ecosystem to their customers which clearly demonstrates the differentiation of the V850E2v3 architecture when running customers' own software applications on Dual V850E2M Core platforms. Prism is an award winning Eclipse-based embedded multicore programming system which allows software engineers to easily assess and realize the full potential of multicore processors without significant changes to their development flow. Prism analyzes the behavior of code running on hardware development boards, virtual machines or simulators. It allows engineers to take their existing sequential code, and before making any changes, explore and analyze opportunities for concurrency. Having identified the optimal parallelization strategies in this way, developers implement parallel structures, and use Prism again to verify performance efficiency and thread-safe operations.

The Renesas Electronics Dual V850E2M Core platform is an asymmetric multi-processor (AMP) architecture containing two 32-bit CPUs. Each core has local RAM (no wait state) and access to shared RAM of the other core, plus overall shared RAM (with wait states). There is shared flash for both cores, and each core has a flash cache which acts like an instruction cache. In the AMP style programming model, tasks are statically allocated between cores. Data must be allocated to use efficiently and minimize wait states. For the Dual V850E2M Core platform, each core can run a real-time operating system, and message passing may be used. CriticalBlue's development on this platform marks the first support of an AMP architecture for the Prism product. CriticalBlue has adapted Prism to support Renesas Electronics architecture and the accompanying programming model by providing software execution trace visualization, allowing the software programmer to see activity on, and inter-communication between, both of the V850 cores in the system. The user can then reallocate data or tasks between cores, and Prism will calculate a schedule including timing changes for synchronizations.

Support for analyzing and optimizing code that contains interrupt support routines (ISRs) is also an expanded feature for Renesas Electronics' Dual V850E2M Core platform Prism. Contained in the solution is the capability to discover the data dependencies between ISRs and the rest of the customer's software program. Details of when an interrupt occurs and the resulting behavior can be viewed in Prism's analysis environment, providing valuable feedback to the software programmer that would otherwise be extremely difficult to visualize. Ultimately, Prism provides to the user an estimate of the performance gain achievable by partitioning their program into multiple tasks and targeting the Dual V850E2M Core architecture.

Described analysis can be done on an existing unmodified software application running on Renesas Electronics' instruction set simulator. Experienced multicore software programmers will benefit from Prism's capabilities in the area of performance tuning and general multicore code optimization.

A 30 day evaluation copy of the Prism Core PSP for V850E2M can be downloaded immediately from the CriticalBlue website http://www.criticalblue.com/prism/eval/.

Supporting Quotes:

Renesas Electronics is the worldwide leader in microcontrollers and the expansion of their V850 series to a multicore platform provides an exciting opportunity for their customers to increase their systems' performance while still maintaining the same architectural platform. said David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue. We are delighted to provide the first multicore analysis and software development tool for this platform and Renesas Electronics customers can begin today to plan the migration of their software onto it.

We have been very impressed with CriticalBlue's Prism for multicore technology. Their expertise in providing proven multicore solutions for MCU embedded software truly makes them a leader in the industry. said Masaomi Ichikawa, associate general manager of General Purpose MCU Systems Division at Renesas Electronics Corporation.

Key Points: - CriticalBlue is based in Edinburgh, U.K. - This relationship helps speed development and optimization of multicore software applications and hence accelerates time to market of end products based on multicore platforms. - Integration with Prism allows Renesas Electronics' customers to analyze their existing single threaded application code for use in multicore platforms. - Prism technology is an Eclipse plug-in and is based on dynamic tracing of the users' software execution. - CriticalBlue has developed an innovative capability to discover the data dependencies between interrupt service routines and the rest of the customer's software program - Developers can work in a familiar Eclipse environment using both Renesas Electronics and CriticalBlue development tools. - The Dual V850E2M Core Instruction level PSP for Prism is available today.

About CriticalBlue

CriticalBlue is a pioneer of flexible, automated system design solutions that meet the increasing performance, power, and cost demands associated with the delivery of advanced electronic products within today's demanding design schedules. The increasing use of complex, multicore processor architectures has accelerated demand for CriticalBlue's technology and expertise throughout all electronic industry sectors. Headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, with offices in San Jose, California, and Tokyo, Japan, the company has delivered multiple solutions for key aspects of embedded software design, including Prism, a multicore embedded software design environment, and Cascade, a software accelerator synthesis technology. The company is funded by European, US Silicon Valley, Japanese venture capitalists and corporate investors. To learn more, please visit http://www.criticalblue.com

SOURCE: CriticalBlue

CONTACT: CriticalBlue Media Contact: David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue,+1-408-573-3609, david.stewart@criticalblue.com