Santa Barbara, CA. February 7, 2000-- Green Hills Software today announced the availability of the MULTI 2000™ Integrated Development Environment for the ARM® processor family. The MULTI 2000 IDE, together with Green Hills' family of optimizing C, C++, and EC++compilers, automates all aspects of embedded software development for ARM processors, including the ARM7™, ARM7TDMI™, ARM7500FE™, ARM9E and StrongARM®.

MULTI 2000 provides a uniform set of capabilities for ARM software development that span Windows 95/98, Windows NT, 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 ARM/Thumb profiler (CodeBalance™), and real-time RTOS EventAnalyzer. MULTI also features an instruction set simulator (SimARM) that allows programmers to develop and test code on a PC or workstation without the need for the target hardware. Also available from Green Hills, as an option, is ARM UK's cycle-accurate ARMulator simulator, which is fully integrated with MULTI 2000.

"We are very happy to see Green Hills continue its support for the ARM architecture," said Richard Phelan, director of 3rd party software products at ARM. "Integrated development environments like MULTI are proving key to the development of the sophisticated programs that run on high-performance ARM microprocessors. Advanced optimizing compilers like those available from Green Hills are essential for holding memory costs down and reducing system software development time while harnessing the full processing power of the ARM core."

The heart of the MULTI environment is a source-level debugger that features process- and system-level debug capability. The debugger 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) and X-Windows debugging. 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 ThreadX™ can start and stop tasks, and monitor OS resources like buffers, queues, and streams. Other key features include:

Incremental debug, which enables portions of an application to be debugged and recompiled separately from the rest of the application.

An object-oriented browser that shows the structure of classes, static calls, and dynamic calls in a hierarchical format, color-coded to indicate the type of function or class being displayed.

A separate window for each process that lets programmers independently set conditional and temporary breakpoints, single step, and examine local and global variables.

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 ARM 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++.

Green Hills C/C++ compiler takes full advantage of the ARM's 16-bit Thumb® architecture extensions, which enable designers to achieve significant reductions in code size without compromising performance.

To help embedded systems programmers maximize performance and efficiency and make size/speed tradeoffs, MULTI 2000 provides a run-time execution profiler known as CodeBalance. The profiler lets users see the code size and run time for each function as compiled using 16- or 32-bit instructions. Then, based on user-supplied size and speed constraints, the profiler outputs a set of command line directives to the compiler that specify how the source code should be partitioned into 16- and 32-bit segments to achieve the desired result.

"In the benchmarks we've done," remarked Green Hills vice president of marketing John Carbone, "applications compiled using a mixture of 32-bit and 16-bit instructions typically show a 35% reduction in code size relative to straight 32-bit implementations with little degradation in execution speed. This reduction in code size can result in significant memory savings, which is critical to designers working on embedded projects with tight cost constraints."

MULTI supports a variety of host/target connectivity and debug options, including ARM's EmbeddedICE, Multi-ICE and Angel ROM Monitor, HP's Emulator Probe, and Macraigor's OCDemon.

More on Green Hills

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 compile-edit-build-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, 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.