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CriticalBlue Announces Broader Support for Renesas' Multicore Platforms Within Prism
SAN JOSE, California, May 2, 2012/PRNewswire/ --
Release of new Prism Platform Support Package helps developers unlock the power of
Renesas' manycore parallel architecture
CriticalBlue, a provider of embedded multicore software analysis, exploration and
verification tools with associated services, announced today the availability of more
support for different multicore platforms from Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723)
, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, within its Prism product.
Software developers using various Renesas' multicore platforms can now analyze their
existing software applications, quickly evaluate performance on the chosen platform, and
accelerate the implementation and tuning of their software on the parallel architecture.
This announcement deepens the existing collaborative relationship between CriticalBlue
and Renesas which previously produced Prism support for SH-4A and V850 platforms and now
adds supports for the imaging hardware accelerator engine based multicore platforms.
Multimedia processing functions, such as network connection or voice and image
processing require high performance processing, particularly in automotive applications
where the growing use of electronics continuously demands more performance but faces the
challenge of the increasing power required to achieve that performance.
Renesas, as the leader of the automotive microcontroller (MCU) market, has introduced
multicore products to answer this market demand. The parallel processing on these
platforms improves the performance while optimizing the power efficiency. However, such
platforms introduce some new concepts from the developers' perspective when porting their
software from single to multicore platforms. Renesas quickly responded to concerns about
these new challenges and chose to develop, in collaboration with CriticalBlue, support for
Renesas multicore platforms within the Prism tool. This delivers a software solution which
enables users to take advantage of the parallel architecture while allowing them to get a
good understanding of the achievable performance of the multicore design and the resulting
porting effort.
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 existing 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.
In addition to partitioning software onto multicore hardware, the availability of this
new Prism Platform Support Package (PSP) will be that users can quantify the benefit of
migrating their software applications to multicore platforms. Developers can analyze the
impact of the parallel architecture, selecting a number of cores and viewing data cache
performance at function or source line level, resulting in an ability to see the impact of
such core architectural features on the overall concurrent schedule. This important
feedback to the software programmer would be extremely difficult to visualize otherwise.
Ultimately, Prism provides developers with an estimate of the performance gain achievable
by partitioning their program into multiple threads, as well as providing a methodology
and flow to implement, tune and verify that multi-threaded software.
These analyses can be done on existing unmodified software applications running on an
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 PSPs for Renesas multicore platforms are
available today from the CriticalBlue website
http://www.criticalblue.com/prism/renesas.
Supporting Quotes:
"We have added support for many different homogeneous multicore platforms since Prism
was released in 2009 but this is our first many-core platform." said David Stewart, CEO,
CriticalBlue. "Highly parallel engines present a deeper set of challenges for software
developers and it has been a pleasure to continue working with Renesas to realize a
solution which will deliver tangible benefits to our joint customers."
"The multicore architecture delivers outstanding performance when configured correctly
and loaded up with sufficient work to process, and our customers often ask us for help in
figuring out how best to migrate their applications to the parallel platform." said
Jean-Luc Bui, engineer, Renesas. "The Prism technology, coupled with the knowledge of
CriticalBlue's engineers, creates an ideal environment to evaluate the benefits available
to our customers if they use our multicore platform and to implement the required software
changes efficiently and safely."
Key Points:
- Prism helps speed development and optimization of multicore software
applications and hence accelerates time to market of end products based on highly
parallel architecture.
- Integration with Prism allows Renesas customers to analyze their existing
single threaded application code for use with multicore platform.
- Prism technology is an Eclipse plug-in and is based on dynamic tracing of the
users' software execution.
- Developers can work in a familiar Eclipse environment using existing IDEs and
compilers alongside CriticalBlue's Prism development tools.
- The Renesas V850, SH-4A and image hardware accelerator engine PSPs for Prism
are available now.
About CriticalBlue
CriticalBlue guides software developers through the task of migrating to and
optimizing code on multicore platforms through the delivery of innovative and multicore
software focused tools, training and services. 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. The company is funded by European, US Silicon
Valley, Japanese venture capitalists and corporate investors. To learn more, please visit
http://www.criticalblue.com
All product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective
owners.
Source: CriticalBlue
CriticalBlue Media Contact: David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue, +1-408-573-3609 , david.stewart@criticalblue.com
CriticalBlue Announces Broader Support for Renesas' Multicore Platforms Within Prism
SAN JOSE, California, May 2, 2012/PRNewswire/ --
Release of new Prism Platform Support Package helps developers unlock the power of
Renesas' manycore parallel architecture
CriticalBlue, a provider of embedded multicore software analysis, exploration and
verification tools with associated services, announced today the availability of more
support for different multicore platforms from Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723)
, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, within its Prism product.
Software developers using various Renesas' multicore platforms can now analyze their
existing software applications, quickly evaluate performance on the chosen platform, and
accelerate the implementation and tuning of their software on the parallel architecture.
This announcement deepens the existing collaborative relationship between CriticalBlue
and Renesas which previously produced Prism support for SH-4A and V850 platforms and now
adds supports for the imaging hardware accelerator engine based multicore platforms.
Multimedia processing functions, such as network connection or voice and image
processing require high performance processing, particularly in automotive applications
where the growing use of electronics continuously demands more performance but faces the
challenge of the increasing power required to achieve that performance.
Renesas, as the leader of the automotive microcontroller (MCU) market, has introduced
multicore products to answer this market demand. The parallel processing on these
platforms improves the performance while optimizing the power efficiency. However, such
platforms introduce some new concepts from the developers' perspective when porting their
software from single to multicore platforms. Renesas quickly responded to concerns about
these new challenges and chose to develop, in collaboration with CriticalBlue, support for
Renesas multicore platforms within the Prism tool. This delivers a software solution which
enables users to take advantage of the parallel architecture while allowing them to get a
good understanding of the achievable performance of the multicore design and the resulting
porting effort.
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 existing 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.
In addition to partitioning software onto multicore hardware, the availability of this
new Prism Platform Support Package (PSP) will be that users can quantify the benefit of
migrating their software applications to multicore platforms. Developers can analyze the
impact of the parallel architecture, selecting a number of cores and viewing data cache
performance at function or source line level, resulting in an ability to see the impact of
such core architectural features on the overall concurrent schedule. This important
feedback to the software programmer would be extremely difficult to visualize otherwise.
Ultimately, Prism provides developers with an estimate of the performance gain achievable
by partitioning their program into multiple threads, as well as providing a methodology
and flow to implement, tune and verify that multi-threaded software.
These analyses can be done on existing unmodified software applications running on an
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 PSPs for Renesas multicore platforms are
available today from the CriticalBlue website
http://www.criticalblue.com/prism/renesas.
Supporting Quotes:
"We have added support for many different homogeneous multicore platforms since Prism
was released in 2009 but this is our first many-core platform." said David Stewart, CEO,
CriticalBlue. "Highly parallel engines present a deeper set of challenges for software
developers and it has been a pleasure to continue working with Renesas to realize a
solution which will deliver tangible benefits to our joint customers."
"The multicore architecture delivers outstanding performance when configured correctly
and loaded up with sufficient work to process, and our customers often ask us for help in
figuring out how best to migrate their applications to the parallel platform." said
Jean-Luc Bui, engineer, Renesas. "The Prism technology, coupled with the knowledge of
CriticalBlue's engineers, creates an ideal environment to evaluate the benefits available
to our customers if they use our multicore platform and to implement the required software
changes efficiently and safely."
Key Points:
- Prism helps speed development and optimization of multicore software
applications and hence accelerates time to market of end products based on highly
parallel architecture.
- Integration with Prism allows Renesas customers to analyze their existing
single threaded application code for use with multicore platform.
- Prism technology is an Eclipse plug-in and is based on dynamic tracing of the
users' software execution.
- Developers can work in a familiar Eclipse environment using existing IDEs and
compilers alongside CriticalBlue's Prism development tools.
- The Renesas V850, SH-4A and image hardware accelerator engine PSPs for Prism
are available now.
About CriticalBlue
CriticalBlue guides software developers through the task of migrating to and
optimizing code on multicore platforms through the delivery of innovative and multicore
software focused tools, training and services. 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. The company is funded by European, US Silicon
Valley, Japanese venture capitalists and corporate investors. To learn more, please visit
http://www.criticalblue.com
All product or service names mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective
owners.
Source: CriticalBlue
CriticalBlue Media Contact: David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue, +1-408-573-3609 , david.stewart@criticalblue.com