Campbell, Ca.  -- Responding to the need for some efficient way to test the variety of embedded and connected iA appliances and devices employing complex 32 bit CPUs, often in distributed and multiprocessing environments, Virtutech Inc. has just announced availability of its Simics 2.0.

According to Peter Magnusson, founder and CEO of Virtutech,  Simics 2.0 is the first simulation platform to create virtual test laboratories that simulate hundreds of complete systems, unchanged, including operating systems, BIOS, firmware, drivers and applications. 

"Hardware costs involved with development and testing systems, which often exceed tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, are a burden on budgets, and production cycle time is lengthened because too few test environments are available," he said. "Testing, system integration, and simulation for the development of complex electronic products and devices are critical areas for cost and schedule containment and reductions." 

Simics 2.0, he said, allows developers of complex heterogenous systems of distributed elements to build virtual test laboratories that run on commodity off-the-shelf PCs, which are scalable and deployable across all engineering tasks. 

Simics can run at speeds of over one billion simulated instructions per second, and key tests may run many times faster than real time, Magnusson said. This allows simulation of an entire distributed system -- hardware, software, processors and the operating systems. Moreover, he said, because it is processor agnostic, any processor architecture can be simulated on any other architecture. 

"In addition, Simics can simulate heterogeneous systems containing several different processor architectures, even allowing them to share memory," he said. With a scalable architecture, the environment can support simulated systems with hundreds of simulated processors. It also features  distributed simulation support, allowing several simulation processes on one or more machines, all sharing the same virtual time. 

Simics pricing varies based on use and model requirements. For more information on the technology  www.virtutech.com.

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