Green Hills Extends PowerPC Support With Integrated Development Environment And Optimizing Compiler For MPC7450

MULTI® 2000 IDE And Optimizing Compiler Exploit Motorola's G4 Superscalar And SIMD Vector Processing Capabilities

Santa Barbara, CA. March 12, 2001 -- Green Hills Software, Inc. today announced the availability of its MULTI® 2000 Integrated Development Environment for Motorola's MPC7450 PowerPC™ microprocessor, a high-performance, superscalar RISC processor optimized for hosting next-generation networking infrastructure applications. The MULTI 2000 IDE features a groundbreaking optimizing C compiler that takes full advantage of the Motorola MPC7450 microprocessor's high-speed superscalar and AltiVec™ vector processing capabilities. The new IDE also provides powerful editing, debugging, profiling, and project management capabilities that are optimized for the MPC7450 microprocessor's integer, floating point, and vector processing units.

This announcement extends Green Hills' already impressive support for Motorola's line of PowerPC microprocessors, which now includes the MPC5xx, MPC6xx, MPC7xx, MPC8xx, MPC74xx, and MPC82xx families. Green Hills offers a full range of software development tools and royalty-free operating systems for the PowerPC family, including:

• MULTI 2000, the industry's most advanced integrated software development environment.
   
  
• The industry's most advanced PowerPC C/C++ and Ada95 compilers, which provide full support for the MPC7450 microprocessor's AltiVec technology.
   
  
• Real-time operating systems for both deeply embedded (ThreadX) and mission-critical applications (INTEGRITY), including an optimized RTOS (INTEGRITY-178B) for safety-critical defense and telecom applications that require 99.999% and higher availability.
   
  
• A comprehensive suite of embedded Internet connectivity products, including Interniche's TCP/IP protocol stack, web server, World Wide Web browser, routing protocols (NATrouter and PPP), SNMP network management software, and servers for POP3 email, TELNET, DHCP and FTP.
   
  
• Full support for Trillium's telephony protocols, which encompass SS7, ATM, Broadband ISDN, Frame Relay, MPLS, VoIP (H.323, SIP, and MGCP/MEGACO/H.248), SIGTRAN, 3G Wireless, ISDN and other communications applications.
  

"Smart compiler technology is the key to reaping the full performance advantages of high-speed superscalar and vector processors like the MPC7450," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software. "Our C/C++ compiler, together with the MULTI IDE, makes it easy to design efficient code that keeps the MPC7450's integer units, floating point unit, and vector processing units operating at full tilt without having to program in assembly language."

"Motorola is pleased to work with Green Hills Software to provide complete tool sets for our customers," stated Brian Wilkie, corporate vice president and general manager of Motorola's Computing Platform Division. "Motorola's high performance superscalar MPC7450 PowerPC microprocessor with AltiVec technology paired with Green Hills user-friendly MULTI IDE and state-of-the-art compiler make it easier for our customers to design high quality products faster."

The MPC7450 microprocessor is the third member of Motorola's G4 family of PowerPC processors. Combining four integer processing units with an IEEE 754-compatible floating point unit, the MPC7450 processor features a 128-bit SIMD (single instruction multiple data) AltiVec vector processing unit. The MPC7450 microprocessor also features 32 kbytes each of L1 instruction and data cache, 256 kbytes of on-chip unified L2 cache, two memory management units (one each for instruction and data), and an external interface for up to two Mbytes of L3 cache.

The MULTI 2000 IDE automates all aspects of software development for PowerPC microprocessors, including the MPC7450 processor. Featuring a window-oriented editor, RTOS-aware source-level debugger, and graphical program builder, MULTI 2000 also includes a run-time error checker, version control system, and performance profiler. MULTI also features an instruction set simulator that allows programmers to develop and test PowerPC code on a PC or workstation without the need for the target hardware.

The heart of the MULTI IDE 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, and includes a language-sensitive expression evaluator. The MULTI 2000 debugger also 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 can start and stop tasks, and monitor OS resources like buffers, queues, and streams.

MULTI's optimizing compiler automatically partitions C programs for optimal execution on the MPC7450 processor. The compiler automatically analyzes data flow and data dependencies, automatically reordering instructions to exploit the processor's dual-issue capability and keep its pipelined integer, floating point and vector processing units operating in parallel. The compiler further enhances vector processing performance separating complex numbers into real and imaginary parts and arranging data in memory so that related vector sets stay together.

More On Green Hills Software

Incorporated in 1982, Green Hills Software, Inc., is a leading supplier of royalty-free real-time operating systems and software development tools for 32- and 64-bit embedded systems. Green Hills' royalty-free INTEGRITY® and the ThreadX® real-time operating systems, fully integrated with its market leading compilers and MULTI® integrated development environment, provide a total development and run-time solution that addresses both deeply embedded and maximum reliability applications. Green Hills Software is headquartered in Santa Barbara, CA, with international headquarters in the United Kingdom. For more information on Green Hills Software products, please call 1-805-965-6044 or email inquiries to sales@ghs.com.

MOTOROLA is a registered trademarks of Motorola, Inc. AltiVec is a trademark of Motorola, Inc.