Green Hills Software, I-Logix partner to redefine IDE

By Control Engineering Staff October 13, 2005

System designers and developers have traditionally used separate environments for different phases of development—for example, in requirements analysis through design versus implementation through deployment. This is an inefficient approach, because a design has to be recreated in implementation and needs manual updating for changes. A new strategic partnership between Green Hills Software Inc . (GHS) and I-Logix Inc . has enabled what the companies call a “next logical evolution” to redefine the integrated development environment (IDE). The developers call it “the first single-source, fully standards-based IDE that addresses all phases of embedded systems development—from requirements specification through deployment.”

“Redefining” integrated development environment involves combining three elements: Integrated design (Rhapsody MDD), development (Multi IDE), and deployment (RTOS and middleware).

Under the agreement, GHS will distribute and support I-Logix Rhapsody Model-Driven Development (MDD) environment, together with GHS’ Multi and AdaMulti development environments and its POSIX-conformant, Integrity real-time operating system (RTOS). Reportedly, these seamlessly integrated product elements enable a unique bi-directional workflow between modeling and implementation. “Changes in market dynamics for embedded systems call for redefining the development environment. It’s no longer a set of discrete activities,” says David Barnett, director of product marketing at GHS.

In contrast to traditional embedded system development, combining Multi and Rhapsody (based on Unified Modeling Language [UML] 2.0 standard) accelerates time-to-market by generating implementation in C, C++, or Ada source code directly from the UML model—which is automatically updated to reflect code changes, say the developers. Moreover, traceability between source code and design requirements is provided to help ensure that a final product satisfies its design objectives.

Integration of Rhapsody, Multi, and Integrity addresses all phases of embedded systems development; namely, requirements analysis and design, validation, implementation, debugging and optimization, testing, and deployment. Rhapsody generates all source code/configuration files needed to run a final application on Integrity RTOS. For resource-constrained, cost-sensitive devices, GHS’ small, fast velOSity microkernel is also supported. Integrity and velOSity are royalty-free.

Numerous customer benefits accrue from the integrated offering. Among these, Neeraj Chandra, senior vice president, marketing and corporate development at I-Logix, considers the following as the two most important: Ability of the modeling to be tightly integrated with the IDE and RTOS, and seamless model/code-level debugging on the host and target. “Ability to do target-level debugging helps to greatly speed up the embedded system development process,” says Chandra.

Rhapsody for Multi IDE is available from Green Hills Software; pricing starts at $14,400 for an integrated system.

To streamline the product’s adoption time, Green Hills Software and I-Logix are conducting a series of hands-on workshops during October 2005 throughout the U.S. and Canada. The one-day, complementary workshops cover Unified Modeling Language techniques, latest trends in Model-Driven Development, and related topics for organizations to quickly develop and deploy secure, reliable embedded applications. For more information and free registration, visit www.ilogix.com/workshops.aspx?id=270

Frank J. Bartos, executive editor fbartos@reedbusiness.com