Major new version of award-winning requirements traceability tool
suite includes new and enhanced plug-in tools, features and interfaces

Geensoft, the specialist independent provider of software design tools and associated professional services for embedded systems development, has launched Reqtify 2010, a major new version of its award-winning tool suite for the automated management of embedded hardware and software requirements capture, traceability and impact analysis throughout the entire development lifecycle. Rectify 2010 delivers improved productivity through an extensive range of new and enhanced plug-in tools, features and interfaces.

"Reqtify 2010 includes the most extensive range of new features and functions that we have introduced," said Eric Larronde-Larretche, Geensoft's Product Line Manager for Reqtify. "Approaching 10 year's old, Reqtify's well-proven technology is now firmly established in, and extremely widely used by, the embedded systems design community worldwide."

Reqtify 2010 includes new Collaborative Project Management and Reviewer plug-in tools. The new Collaborative Project Management (CPM) plug-in considerably eases a previously painful and time-consuming process for OEMs relating to the collation and management of design partners' requirements and traceability data.  It enables project managers to consolidate all projects and sub-projects into one global Reqtify project, with automatic linkage of design artifacts to the original requirements. This enables remote teams to more easily undertake global impact analysis, measure requirements coverage and share results on an entire project throughout the development lifecycle. The new CPM plug-in includes a specific user management module allowing user profiles, rights and roles to be defined in order to facilitate access control.  The Reviewer plug-in has also been completely re-built to make it more visually oriented, facilitate workflow customisation and improve the management of user rights.

Reqtify 2010's range of new features is extensive. Links management is critical to requirements traceability and Reqtify 2010 now provides the ability to automatically highlight suspect links that have to be validated as soon as changes occur to covered requirements. A new Links Detail View has also been included where engineers can create, edit and analyse traceability and dependencies between project artifacts. It is also possible to define links as either traceability or dependency links so that the required coverage calculation is obtained.  A completely reworked Management View enables engineers to easily check project progress and metrics using visual indicators for traceability achievements, requirement errors and quality. Rules Management has also been significantly improved with a new rules management cockpit that enables existing rules to be enabled/disabled using a simple check list and new rules to be created using a simple, intuitive rules editor.  A new XML-based tester enables pre-analysis of data to be undertaken prior to the allocation of specific document types to analysis reports. Filters can now be defined with variable values instead of having to define separate filters for each value.

Reqtify 2010 also includes a range of new and enhanced interfaces. A new Eclipse CDT interface and tagger overcomes a major hole in Eclipse Workbench enabling requirements traceability to be easily added to the C/C++ code generated using the CDT capability. The IBM-Rational DOORS interface has also been upgraded to include Full Hierarchy analysis which can be used when there is no clear definition of Sections and Requirements.  The interface for HP Quality Center has also been significantly enhanced to include support for Version 10. Improvements have also been made to the Microsoft Office suite and to Sparx Enterprise Architect interfaces.

"With over 10,000 users in 500 companies in Europe, North America and Asia, the launch of Reqtify 2010 further reinforces our position as the market leader in the automated management of requirements gathering, traceability and impact analysis for embedded systems," said Eliane Fourgeau, CEO of Geensoft.  "It also highlights our commitment to the ongoing development of our products and importance as a strong, independent player in the market for embedded systems design tools following our recent management buy-out from Geensys."

Reqtify in profile
Reqtify is the most widely deployed solution for addressing requirements capture, traceability and impact analysis in the most demanding, safety-critical domains such as the aerospace and defence, railway transportation, automotive and medical instrumentation industries. Reqtify enables automatic and customisable document generation as evidence that a product meets certification and/or quality constraint requirements at all times throughout the development cycle. Thanks to its impact analysis and requirements coverage capabilities, Reqtify gives all project stakeholders a thorough insight into the effort required to complete each project task (specification, design, V&V activities, integration) and for each product release. It gives a unique and global view of the overall project status enabling project leaders and quality managers to perform risk analyses and to prove compliancy with project requirements and constraints. As such, Reqtify is recognised as a solution that can provide an immediate return-on-investment for projects initiated under quality standards objectives like CMMI or SPICE.  It has also been deployed or qualified for application development under certification constraints like DO178C, DO254, EN50128, IEC 61508, ISO26262, FDA 21CFR Part 11, MODAF and DoDAF. With Reqtify, engineers can continue to use their existing working environments to fulfill traceability objectives.

Geensoft in profile
Geensoft delivers industry-proven, best-in-class embedded systems development tools and professional services that help engineering teams in the aerospace, automotive, defence, energy, industrial automation, medical and transportation industries to more efficiently manage their engineering processes as well as design, verify and validate their model-based embedded systems applications.  Privately owned with 60+ employees and headquartered in France, Geensoft has sales offices in Europe and Japan supported by a network of distributors and value-added integrators worldwide.  Geensoft's products include the award-winning Reqtify, ControlBuild and AUTOSAR Builder as well as RT-Builder tool suites.  Reqtify provides automated management of embedded systems and software requirements capture, traceability and impact analysis throughout the entire development lifecycle.  AUTOSAR Builder enables ARTOP-based design, development, verification and validation of AUTOSAR-compliant automotive electronic systems.  ControlBuild is a front-to-back environment for the design, development, validation, deployment and maintenance of control and automation systems and applications.  RT-Builder facilitates the modelling, simulation and validation of distributed real-time architectures for multi-processor and multi-bus systems.

For further information, e-mail: eliane.fourgeau@geensoft.com   Refer to page 187

EnSilica launches major new version
of its eSi-RISC Development Suite

EnSilica, a leading independent provider of front-end IC design services, has launched a major new version of its eSi-RISC Development Suite.  The eSi-RISC Development Suite v2.1 provides a comprehensive platform for easily evaluating EnSilica's family of eSi-RISC highly configurable and low-power soft processor cores, along with a complete development environment for the creation, implementation and test of eSi-RISC processor embedded application designs.

The eSi-RISC Development Suite v2.1 includes a new hardware evaluation platform based on Altera's Cyclone III FPGA with rapid software development and debugging facilitated through the Eclipse IDE (Integrated Development Environment) and industry-standard GNU GCC 4.4.0 toolchain, which now features native support for the eSi-RISC architectural features. FPGA configurations are supplied for the complete eSi-RISC processor family, along with numerous application examples demonstrating how the system-on-chip peripherals can be used, including a full port of the open source FreeRTOS with lwIP TCP/IP network stack.  Comprehensive documentation and a range of interactive tutorials are also included.

Extensive debug facilities in the eSi-RISC Development Suite v2.1 also significantly enhance development productivity. Non-intrusive debugging for FPGAs is provided through the JTAG hardware debugger, which provides the ability to examine data, insert break and watchpoints and control program execution, giving developers full read/write access to all variables, registers, memory and attached peripherals, while supporting single-step and step-over execution of the C code and views of the disassembly.  Debugging is seamless with communication over a USB interface to a host PC with GDB, the GNU project debugger, running inside Eclipse.

The eSi-RISC Development Suite v2.1 also allows developers to debug code using hardware/software co-simulation by enabling remote control of Mentor Graphics' ModelSim from the Eclipse GDB project debugger through a network socket connection. ModelSim conveniently displays disassembled instructions as text in the wave display which is especially helpful for SoC level hardware and software debugging.

Network application debugging is also considerably simplified with the integration of WinPcap into the new eSi-RISC Development Suite's Instruction Set Simulator to emulate the eSi-EMAC Ethernet MAC peripheral connection. This makes it possible, for instance, to run a Web Server on eSi-RISC with a live Ethernet connection serving web pages to a browser running on a remote computer.

"The ease and speed with which processors can be evaluated and applications developed and tested, plays an important role in developers' choice of processors," said Ian Lankshear, Managing Director of EnSilica.  "The eSi-RISC Development Suite v2.1 includes a host of new features and capabilities to enable our eSi-RISC processor family to be easily evaluated and quickly deployed."

The eSi-RISC processor family
eSi-RISC is a family of highly configurable and low-power soft processor cores for embedded systems that scales across a wide range of applications and uniquely supports both 16 and 32-bit configurations. The eSi-RISC family of processors has been extensively silicon proven in a number of ASIC and FPGA technologies.

The eSi-RISC family includes the eSi-1600 16-bit processor, eSi-3200 32-bit processor, eSI-3250 32 bit processor and eSi-3250sfp incorporating a single precision floating point processor. The processor cores also benefit from selectable Harvard/von Neumann memory and configurable cache options.  The highly pipelined nature of their design gives customers a technology-independent solution that is ideal for both FPGA applications and ASIC technologies.

Ensilica in profile
EnSilica is an established company with many years experience providing high quality IC design services to customers undertaking FPGA and ASIC designs. EnSilica has an impressive record of success working across many market segments with particular expertise in multimedia and communications applications. Customers range from start-ups to blue-chip companies. EnSilica can provide the full range of front-end IC design services, from System Level Design, RTL coding and Verification through to either a FPGA device or the physical design interface (synthesis, STA, DFT) for ASIC designs. EnSilica also offers a portfolio of IP, including a highly configurable 16/32 bit embedded processor called eSi-RISC and the eSi-Comms range of communications IP.

For further information about EnSilica, view website: http://www.ensilica.com  and eSi-RISC product information can be downloaded at: http://www.esi-risc.com

Further information can also be obtained via e-mail: david.wheeler@ensilica.com  Refer to page 193