"Green Hills Software's compiler is optimized to take advantage of Toshiba's TX System RISC(tm) architecture," said Siamak Siyami, applications engineering manager at Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. "Our customers have been using GHS compilers for years and they have generated excellent results for our MIPS(R)-based processors. We tested other compilers, but none of them produced better results than GHS."

"We chose the GHS compiler," added David Lamar, senior marketing manager for microcontroller products at NEC, "because it provides a strong and efficient set of tools for supporting the V832 in consumer and automotive/industrial EEMBC applications."

The EEMBC, founded in 1997, has an active membership of 28 companies. EEMBC's mission is to collaboratively develop benchmark suites that will help customers evaluate microprocessors and help the industry improve the performance and functionality of microprocessors that are used in embedded applications.

Processor vendors who want to evaluate the performance of their CPUs, uCs, and DSPs license source code for the benchmarks from the EEMBC. They then select a compiler to convert the EEMBC source code into machine code for their particular processor. The EEMBC Certification Laboratories (ECL) validates the results by running the benchmarks on that processor using the same compiler and system configuration. The EEMBC benchmarks may also be licensed by RTOS and compiler vendors who want to use them to improve their software tools, and by customers of EEMBC members who want to use the benchmarks to select microprocessors, microcontrollers, and DSPs. Green Hills Software offers C/C++ compilers and a complete Integrated Development Environment for 20 of the 28 EEMBC member company processors, the broadest processor coverage available in the industry.

"Strictly speaking," said John Carbone, vice president of marketing at Green Hills Software, "the EEMBC benchmarks test processor performance. However, to get the best performance on the benchmarks, you need a good compiler. So, to achieve the best possible results, processor vendors typically try running the benchmarks with several different compilers. They then report the result produced by the best compiler. As such, the EEMBC benchmarks become every bit a test of compiler performance as they do of processor performance."

"The significance of these results," continues Carbone, "is they have been run using unaltered EEMBC source code and compilers that have not been tweaked to produce good EEMBC results. In other words, these results provide a good indication of real-world, off-the-shelf compiler performance. End users should bear this in mind when evaluating future EEMBC results that are derived using modified EEMBC code (including in-line assembler for critical code segments) and specialty compilers."

"We are excited about having Green Hills Software involved in the EEMBC benchmark process," added Markus Levy, president of EEMBC. "The consortium is looking forward to having Green Hills' support and enthusiasm in helping the EEMBC develop new versions of these first-time ever benchmarks for the embedded industry."

Green Hills Software was among the first third-party compiler suppliers to license the EEMBC benchmarks, and is in the process of enhancing its compilers to run the benchmarks more efficiently. "Because the EEMBC benchmarks are based on real-world code," remarked Carbone, "we fully expect that the compiler enhancements we make to improve EEMBC performance will also carry through to a broad range of embedded applications not related to EEMBC."

Green Hills Software offers three levels of support for processor vendors who want to evaluate their processors using the EEMBC benchmarks and achieve optimal results:

Vendors who want to run the EEMBC benchmarks on their processor with an existing Green Hills compiler (not optimized for EEMBC) can do so free of charge. Green Hills will grant no-charge licenses for use by these microprocessor vendors in support of EEMBC benchmarking.

For a fee of $5000, Green Hills will provide a version of its compiler that provides generic EEMBC enhancements in the compiler's global optimizer.

For a fee of $50,000 (and up), Green Hills will produce a target-specific customized version of its compiler with EEMBC enhancements (global optimizer plus code generator) that are optimized for a particular processor.

Green Hills Software's family of C, C++, EC++, Ada95, Pascal and FORTRAN compilers, together with the MULTI Integrated Development Environment, automate all aspects of embedded software development. Featuring a window-oriented, RTOS-aware source-level debugger, MULTI also provides a graphical program builder, run-time error checker, execution profiler, and source/version control. MULTI also provides instruction set simulators for most major microprocessors that enable programmers to develop code without having access to target hardware.

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 software 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, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida. International headquarters are located in the United Kingdom, with offices in France, Germany, and the Netherlands. For sales information on Green Hills Software's products, please call 1-805-965-6044 or email inquiries to sales@ghs.com.