Mentor Graphics Announces Embedded Hypervisor Product With New Configuration, Debugging and Hardware Support

WILSONVILLE, Ore., September 3, 2014 – Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced its newest version of the Mentor® Embedded Hypervisor product offering advanced features for system configuration, debugging, and hardware support for developing robust, reliable, and secure applications. This solution enables high-performance applications for industrial, medical, automotive, networking, telecommunications and consumer electronics products.

The new Mentor Embedded Hypervisor product provides data-driven configuration and device trees for guest resource partitioning instead of hard-coded guest resource tables contained in each board support package. This enables easier system build and configuration. Binary image generation can now be easily deployed on the target hardware. Debugging enhancements include: a simpler command syntax and more extensible design capabilities; JTAG debugging for the hypervisor and guest operating systems; and tighter integration with the Sourcery™ CodeBench integrated development environment (IDE) for synchronized system tracing in a single analysis to identify problems and performance bottlenecks.

Today’s complex heterogeneous System on Chip (SoC) architectures increasingly combine application class cores alongside microcontroller-class cores, driving the consolidation of complex heterogeneous operating environments on a single device. As devices become more complex, an asymmetric multi-processing (AMP) framework based on embedded virtualization technology is required to manage the challenges associated with inter-process communication (IPC), resource sharing, and processor control within a heterogeneous multi-OS environment. This new release delivers an efficient and scalable IPC mechanism (based on technology found in most Linux® operating system distributions), extended for multicore and multi-OS scenarios, including a clean-room implementation to support it.

“Our customers in automotive, industrial and medical markets are demanding embedded virtualization technology to consolidate operating systems such as Linux or Android with an RTOS such as Mentor’s Nucleus or bare metal applications,” stated Rajeev Kumar, director of i.MX products for Freescale. “Mentor’s Hypervisor technology addresses demands for performance, robustness, and security of the innovative products being developed today on i.MX 6 devices.”

System Configuration and Debugging for Secure and Reliable Devices

Architecting a design to incorporate multiple operating systems, assigning peripherals to virtual machines, and determining how to share them effectively, requires text editors and command line scripts; by default, this is very tedious and error prone. The new Hypervisor product helps customers configure the system and partition resources with data-driven models. This build system configuration deploys and visualizes interactions between multiple operating systems and applications across processors. This latest Hypervisor product includes more tools to improve developer workflow efficiency and debugging capabilities, with hypervisor and guest operating system support using the Abatron BDI3000 JTAG probe.

The Mentor Embedded Hypervisor product supports the ARM® TrustZone® technology, a system-wide approach to security. When combined with virtualization technology from Mentor, this establishes a foundation for safe and reliable embedded devices. The new hypervisor product supports the ARM Cortex® A9 (Freescale® i.MX6) and ARM Cortex A15 (Texas Instruments® OMAP5™ and “Jacinto 6”) device families.

The new Mentor Embedded Hypervisor enables a variety of guest operating systems with “out-of-the-box” support for The Yocto Project™ version 1.6, Linux distributions, GENIVI® specification 6 compliant platforms, and real-time operating systems, such as the Nucleus® real time operating system (RTOS) and bare metal environments. Professional services enable AUTOSAR software, and Android environments.

“Mentor’s hypervisor technology allows embedded customers to consolidate operating systems such a Linux, Android, Mentor’s Nucleus® RTOS, bare metal applications and embedded tools with Sitara and Jacinto application processors for innovative and highly-productive embedded development,” said Matt Watson, Product Manager, Infotainment Processors at Texas Instruments. “This solution helps customer develop applications for in-vehicle infotainment, streaming video, audio and speech recognition systems found in today’s connected cars and internet-of-things products.”

Product Availability and Additional Information

The new Mentor Graphics Hypervisor product is available now. For additional product information, please visit the website: http://www.mentor.com/embedded-software/hypervisor/

About Mentor Embedded

The Mentor Graphics Embedded Systems Division enables embedded development for a variety of applications including automotive, industrial, smart energy, medical devices, and consumer electronics. Embedded developers can create systems with the latest processors and micro-controllers with commercially supported and customizable Linux-based solutions including the industry-leading Sourcery CodeBench and Mentor Embedded Linux products. For real-time control systems, developers can take advantage of the small-foot-print and low-power-capable Nucleus RTOS. For more information, visit www.mentor.com/embedded.