Santa Barbara, CA. May 15, 2000 - Green Hills Software today announced advanced debug support for Agilent Technologies' (NYSE:A) new high-speed E5900B emulation probe. The new probe enhances the debug process by enabling the MULTI® 2000 debugger to acquire and analyze data from, and send data to the target processor at speeds up to 10x faster than those supported by Agilent's older E5900A probe.

The E5900B is a high-speed emulation probe that provides access to and control over target processors. Through the E5900B probe, which connects to the target system via the standard JTAG debug interface port, the MULTI debugger can upload data from the target processor, run, halt, and reset the processor, read/write the processor's registers and memory, single-step through code, and set breakpoints. Agilent and Green Hills also support the ARM processor's ETM (Embedded Trace Macrocell) interface, a debug interface for ARM processors that enables the MULTI user to capture and analyze trace operations (target data and program flow information) without having to halt the processor.

"The E5900B's high-speed debugging capability streamlines the debug process for large programs by enabling the MULTI debugger to download those programs to the target in seconds rather than minutes," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "The new probe's advanced register and memory read and write, trace, single-step and processor control facilities also gives the MULTI debugger much greater visibility into the execution of sophisticated embedded programs."

"The connection between MULTI and the E5900B emulation probe provides engineers with a powerful integrated development environment," said Barbara Johnson, marketing manager at Agilent Technologies. "When used with the Agilent Trace Port Analyzer for ARM, the customer has access to technology that will greatly reduce the time required for diagnosis and correction of complex problems."

The MULTI 2000 IDE, together with Green Hills' family of optimizing C, C++, EC++, and Ada compilers, automates all aspects of software development for most major embedded processors, including those from ARM, Motorola, MIPS, NEC, Infineon, and Hitachi. Available for Windows and Unix host platforms, the MULTI IDE features a window-oriented editor, source-level debugger, graphical program builder, run-time error checker, version control system, performance profiler, optimizing profiler (CodeBalance™), and real-time RTOS EventAnalyzer. MULTI also features an instruction set simulator that allows programmers to develop and test code on a PC or UNIX workstation without the need for the target hardware.

The heart of the MULTI environment is a source-level debugger with incremental debug capability that supports process- and system-level debug. The debugger provides a separate window for each process, supports mixed assembly and high-level language formats, includes a language-sensitive expression evaluator, and provides special support for C++ (such as a Class Browser, object display and template debug capability). The MULTI 2000 debugger is fully RTOS aware, which enables designers to debug and tune their applications at a task level. With the MULTI debugger, designers working with popular RTOSs like OSE™, VxWorks®, INTEGRITY® and ThreadX® can start and stop tasks, and monitor OS resources like buffers, queues, and streams.

MULTI 2000's EventAnalyzer builds on the debugger's real-time capabilities, graphically displaying system and application events on an expandable timeline in real time. Operating like a high-level logic analyzer, the EventAnalyzer GUI displays all context switches, ThreadX API calls, and interrupts in a time-relative manner using intuitive icons. The EventAnalyzer also provides versatile navigation capabilities that allow programmers to zoom in and out of the timeline to obtain greater detail about particular event sequences.

The MULTI 2000 IDE features the industry's most advanced C/C++ optimizing compiler. The scaleable C/C++ compiler lets programmers use switch options to select any subset of C++ they want, from bare bones C, to full-blown ANSI/ISO C++. The compiler also supports Embedded C++ (EC++), a dialect of C++ optimized for resource-constrained embedded applications that achieves the efficiency of C while preserving many of the best object-oriented features of C++.

More on Green Hills Software

Incorporated in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc., is a leading supplier of software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Green Hills offers a family of optimizing C, C++, Embedded C++, Ada 95, FORTRAN and Pascal compilers. The company's unique MULTI Integrated Development Environment automates the edit-compile-debug cycle by integrating advanced facilities such as an RTOS-aware source-level debugger, performance profiler, program builder and version control system.

Green Hills Software's tools support all major 32-bit and 64-bit advanced microprocessor families and target environments, including instruction set simulators, ROM Monitors, commercial and home grown real-time operating systems (RTOS) and in-circuit emulators (ICE).

Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA., and has US offices in California, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida. International headquarters are located in the United Kingdom, with offices in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden. For sales information on Green Hills Software products, please call 1-805-965-6044 or email inquiries to sales@ghs.com.