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Friday 29 August 2008
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|NewsletterEmbedded Systems
Embedded software tool shortens development time
by Steve Bush
Friday 4 May 2007
California-based Electric Cloud has developed tools to speed up embedded software handling in the factory, and is promoting them in Europe.
Its main tool, ElectricAccelerator, provides a means of quickly building production-ready software by spreading it over multiple servers.
“Typically eight to 10 machines, but big installations have 200-plus machines,” Erin Curtis, director of marketing, told EW.
The tools are aimed at products with a lot of code in, personal organisers and phones for example, said the company: “Tens to hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Some of our customers have millions,” said Curtis, adding that such a build can take 40 hours on a single processor.
Specific examples include a Xilinx build that dropped from 23 hours to two hours, and a cut from 12 to under two for Motorola.
The accelerator includes a step that identifies dependencies between elements in the build early, said Curtis, so that the load can be intelligently spread across multiple processors. Dependencies from one build are also saved to act as a guide for future builds.
“Software build management and acceleration have been recognised as the next important areas for enterprises to address as part of their application lifecycle management,” said Mike Maciag, CEO of Electric Cloud.
Two other tools complete the suite: ElectricInsight produces statistical and graphical representations of builds; ElectricCommander automates all the build steps.
Competitors for the suite include tools from IBM and “a lot of DIY and a lot of open-source,” said Curtis.
Electric Cloud was co-founded by Dr John Ousterhout, creator of the Tcl scripting language, and John Graham-Cumming, creator of the open-source POPFile project.
The company has set up its European headquarters in Oxford, and appointed Andrew Patterson its European business director.
Its main tool, ElectricAccelerator, provides a means of quickly building production-ready software by spreading it over multiple servers.
“Typically eight to 10 machines, but big installations have 200-plus machines,” Erin Curtis, director of marketing, told EW.
The tools are aimed at products with a lot of code in, personal organisers and phones for example, said the company: “Tens to hundreds of thousands of lines of code. Some of our customers have millions,” said Curtis, adding that such a build can take 40 hours on a single processor.
Specific examples include a Xilinx build that dropped from 23 hours to two hours, and a cut from 12 to under two for Motorola.
The accelerator includes a step that identifies dependencies between elements in the build early, said Curtis, so that the load can be intelligently spread across multiple processors. Dependencies from one build are also saved to act as a guide for future builds.
“Software build management and acceleration have been recognised as the next important areas for enterprises to address as part of their application lifecycle management,” said Mike Maciag, CEO of Electric Cloud.
Two other tools complete the suite: ElectricInsight produces statistical and graphical representations of builds; ElectricCommander automates all the build steps.
Competitors for the suite include tools from IBM and “a lot of DIY and a lot of open-source,” said Curtis.
Electric Cloud was co-founded by Dr John Ousterhout, creator of the Tcl scripting language, and John Graham-Cumming, creator of the open-source POPFile project.
The company has set up its European headquarters in Oxford, and appointed Andrew Patterson its European business director.
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