As the next generation of IBM microprocessor technology, the POWER6 platform expands and delivers on IBM's leadership in the market to offer growth options to expanding businesses. Part of this endeavor included the development and testing of complex software in the company's powerful POWER6 platform -- a task that traditionally requires the hardware's availability. With Simics, IBM's development teams were able to rise to the challenge of developing complex firmware to boot and run multiple OSes on a virtual system model, "virtually," without the need for actual hardware. This in turn helped reduce the overall hardware expense.
True to its reputation as a leader, IBM quickly realized that it could use Simics to optimize its entire product development life cycle beyond minimizing barriers between the hardware and the software design team. Simics was leveraged for scalability; accelerated development, debug and test cycles; and model reuse and flexibility. "IBM has historically been at the forefront of developing best practices for hardware development, which is especially important as the company continues to create new, complex technologies," said Erich Baier, vice president of hardware development at IBM. "With this in mind, IBM will continue to rely on development solutions that uphold its objectives and help maintain its commitment to delivering high-quality products to market on time and on budget."
-- Scalability -- Using Simics as its single infrastructure, IBM was able to develop four different products in the platform, from low-end servers to high-end servers. It was also critical that IBM's architecture support a variety of OSes. Simics enabled development on all OSes, including Linux and AIX. Finally, Simics is able to scale from small to very large development teams. This was a necessity because of IBM's need to accommodate several hundred developers working on the POWER6 platform.
-- Accelerated development/debug/test cycles -- Given time-to-market constraints and the general demand for high-quality products in the market, Simics' ability to not only model hardware but also to accelerate development cycles was critical. Using Simics, IBM was able to reach some of its development milestones in one-third of the time it took with its previous approaches.
-- Reuse and flexibility -- Simics also afforded IBM the opportunity to reuse the POWER6 model for subsequent products and projects, saving the company future project expenditure. Simics' flexibility was illustrated in its ability to be easily incorporated into IBM's existing development environment, so no additional architectural changes were needed.
-- Development asset -- Using Simics, IBM is building a library of models that enable the company to configure and distribute a complex simulation of any POWER6-based system to multiple development teams, significantly reducing the cost of the actual product needed for its entire product development cycle, and providing on-time and on-demand access to assets.
Due to the overall advantages that Simics provides for next-generation systems development, Virtutech has also joined Power.org to help all the companies that are collaborating on new solutions based on Power Architecture(TM). "The virtualized software development approach to inventing and producing next-generation SOCs and multicore solutions based on Power Architecture provides many tangible benefits for Power.org members," said Kaveh Massoudian, program director for Systems Architecture at IBM and technical chair for Platforms Design at Power.org.
"Over the years, Virtutech Simics has proven its indispensability in providing a simulation of a system as a stand-in for the actual OEM product," said John Lambert, CEO of Virtutech. "While this is certainly a core value of Simics, Virtutech customers like IBM are applauding the additional benefits Simics provides. Leveraging Simics for a broader set of benefits that favorably change the entire product development life cycle will be critical as companies begin developing more complex products."
Virtutech Simics is currently available. For more information on the technology, visit www.virtutech.com or call 408-392-9150.
About Virtutech
Virtutech, Inc. is the leading provider of virtualized software development solutions. Virtutech's flagship solution Simics models electronic systems with high performance and fidelity, providing a programmer-friendly environment throughout the product development lifecycle. Simics eliminates software developers' dependence on hardware and drives concurrent hardware and software development, enabling its customers to optimize productivity, experience lower capital expenditure, accelerate time to market, improve the quality of the released product and reduce project risk. Virtutech serves the needs of the world's leading OEMs in the high-performance computing, aerospace and defense, telecommunications, and networking industries. Its customers include Cisco, Ericsson, Honeywell, IBM and Smiths Aerospace. Virtutech is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. For more information, visit www.virtutech.com.
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