Enhancements to SCADE Suite®, SCADE Display® and the Introduction of SCADE Suite Rapid Prototyper™ Revolutionize Rapid Prototyping and Embedded Display Development for Critical Software

ELANCOURT, France & BOSTON — (BUSINESS WIRE) — March 1, 2010 — Esterel Technologies, the leading worldwide provider of model-based development solutions for mission and safety-critical systems announces the latest innovations in critical software rapid prototyping and embedded graphics display development with the upcoming release of SCADE 6.2. SCADE 6.2 incorporates significant enhancements to both SCADE Suite and SCADE Display in terms of usability, performance, certification, and integration with other tools in the development chain.

“SCADE 6.2 is the next major development milestone that demonstrates our leadership in safety-critical software development by providing both host-based expanded rapid prototyping and target-based embedded user interactivity to our clients who have been asking for a seamless workflow between user interactivity and the embedded application software. Clearly this solves many of the issues of developing mission and safety-critical software for those systems that require ensured quality and performance from the embedded application and the user-interface. SCADE 6.2 addresses exactly that problem”, said Eric Bantegnie, President and CEO of Esterel Technologies.

In particular, SCADE Suite 6.2 introduces SCADE Suite Rapid Prototyper™, a new module specifically offered to improve the stimulation and visualization of the application under design and test through a high-level graphical abstraction. This user-interface abstraction is quickly constructed using a library of predefined widgets such as knobs, sliders, LEDs, buttons, etc., that can be quickly placed on the graphical palette and connected to design-level elements. During run-time verification of the host-based model, these widgets can be used to control and monitor the application simulation giving unprecedented visibility and understanding into the run-time dynamics of the critical application under design.

Beyond critical rapid prototyping, SCADE Suite and SCADE Display have been upgraded to enhance usability and speed design entry and verification. The SCADE Suite 6.2 user interface improvements have focused on the verification activities of the end user, expanding SCADE Suite Model Test Coverage™ (MTC) to support more testing and coverage analysis strategies and improve visibility into the performance of tests executed with MTC. SCADE Display 6.2 usability has improved at the design-entry level now offering direct access to libraries of interactive widgets that can be quickly snapped into the display design.

SCADE Display 6.2 has been enhanced to provide unique interactivity in the graphical display on the embedded target. With this functionality, developers can easily construct complex interactive objects and active regions in the embedded graphical display itself. For developers of mission displays, electronic flight bags, instrument control panels, and cockpits for example, this technology dramatically speeds the development cycle and improves the quality of embedded graphical displays that provide user interaction with touch screens, mice, keyboards, and many other types of input/output devices. This support of interactive displays is particularly unique in that it integrates with the IGL pure-software OpenGL driver, enabling SCADE Display 6.2 to automatically target virtually any hardware platform, not just those relying on hardware accelerated Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).

With respect to quality and performance of the generated code, SCADE Display KCG already has been qualified under DO-178B up to Level A for aerospace and defense application development. The SCADE Display KCG 6.2 code generator will also be certified under EN 50128 up to SIL3/4 for rail applications and IEC 61508 SIL 3 for industrial applications. These qualifications/certifications ensure safety-critical quality and performance in the generated code for the embedded graphics display application.

Support of the overall development tool chain is required in today’s critical application development environment. SCADE 6.2 integration enhancements include improved scalability with configuration management gateway improvements, extensions to the MathWorks Simulink® Interface, and extensions to the SCADE API for Eclipse®. On the code output side, SCADE Suite KCG continues to expand its native support for target deployment under operating systems such as VxWorks® 6.X from Wind River and PikeOS® from SYSGO.

Product Availability

SCADE 6.2 is scheduled to be released in Q3 on Windows XP and Windows 7 platforms.

Download link for Interactive Demonstrations.

About Esterel SCADE

The Esterel SCADE® family of products offers an integrated design and development environment for mission and safety-critical embedded software applications. The core products in the family, SCADE Suite® and SCADE Display® offer graphical design entry, verification through simulation and formal methods, and certified code generation. These products also include integrated requirements management, configuration management, and automatic documentation generation, shortening the time-to-certification.

SCADE Suite is the market leading, model-based development environment dedicated to mission and safety-critical embedded software.

• DO-178B qualified up to level A for Military and Aerospace Industries
• IEC 61508 certified up to SIL 3 by TÜV SÜD for Heavy Equipment, and Energy
• EN 50128 certified up to SIL 3/4 by TÜV SÜD for Rail Transportation
• IEC 60880 compliant for Nuclear Energy