Rethink your project planning with a virtual platform

Jakob Engblom, Wind River Simics
EETimes (9/12/2011 11:25 PM EDT)

A virtual platform is an embedded computer system simulated on a regular PC. The virtual platform behaves like the physical target hardware and can boot and run the complete software stack, providing a platform for architecture definition, system and software design, test, debug, and training.

Virtual platform technology has been used to simulate a very diverse set of targets, from single-processor boards to complex multi-core, multi-board, and rack-based clusters.

They are very useful for system and software development and design as well. Virtual platforms are used across the product life cycle, from initial product definition, through development, and on to deployment and long-term maintenance.

From more than a decade of experience providing virtual platforms to system developers and original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), we’ve found that virtual platforms can have a truly revolutionary effect on software development.

But while the benefits for software development realized by using virtual hardware are certainly nice, embedded developers will not be able to take full advantage of virtual platforms if they only look at them as just a tool to improve software development in isolation does not realize its full potential impact.

A good case in point is project management.

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