ES-SCAN software simplifies EMI measurements
Join the counter-culture: Static analysis on OS X
If your VME equipment operates anywhere near commercial or civilian systems, chances are you’re going to have to deal with FCC EMI/EMC compliance. When systems are designed from the start with EMI as a design criterion, compliance testing can go more smoothly. To do this, designers need test receivers set up and running at the earliest stages of product development. But testers are only one thing; you also need easyto-use software to automate the process and save time. Designed for use with the company’s R&SESP13 and R&SESP17 receivers, Rohde&Schwarz ES-SCAN software can be operated with a single mouse click, invoking preconfigured test setups aimed at commercial EMC standards. Typical configurations include antenna transducer factors, peak value recording, and graphical/numeric data display. User-defined thresholds can be set, as well as detected (or suspected) interference frequencies – making measurements in those regions literally push-button easy. Other nice features include marker functions, automatic peak search, automatic data reduction, and multiple types of output reports. The software runs under WinXP, has interface options for National Instruments’ VISA software, and includes USB, Ethernet, or IEEE-488 hardware connections. Rohde&Schwarz • www.rsa.rohde-schwarz.com • RSC# 37690
OK, so you’ve got your 5G iPod, your third-gen iPhone, and a new Core 2 Duo Mac running OS X 10.5. Oh, yes – and you’ve got a target system destined for a 19-inch VME rack. It’d be a real bummer to have to spark up that old Windows XP machine just to verify some source code. Well, you don’t have to. Check out GrammaTech’s CodeSonar 3.1 Enterprise, now available for desktop and server versions of Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. You can surely get on your “inner Steve” (Jobs) with this product. Designed to identify complex programming bugs via whole-program, interprocedural analysis, CodeSonar 3.1 intentionally targets code destined for safety-critical applications. The tool uses an interprocedural, context-, path-, and object-sensitive analysis method. It first does a regular code build, then instead of creating object code, it creates an abstract representation of the program, which is then symbolically executed via dataflow analysis. Infeasible paths are pruned, false positives suppressed, and the results yield anomalies for the programmer to check. The tool works with the existing source and build system, “watches” how you compile code, and “learns” what it needs in order to perform an analysis. CodeSonar can work on the entire program or on partial programs, and is ideal for zeroing in on buffer overruns or format string vulnerabilities – two common exploits in safety-critical systems. There are more than 20 other code checks besides these, and the tool presents results in HTML. GrammaTech • www.grammatech.com • RSC# 37693
Bye-bye, build audits; hello, on-the-fly debug Statistics from analysts much smarter than us report that up to 70 percent of design time is consumed in writing, debugging, debugging, and debugging software. You get the idea. So any kind of tool that contracts this iterative process – especially if it can help during the coding part of the process – might be a real money saver. We don’t care if you’re designing VME systems or coding the next PS3 game. The automated source code analysis tool called Insight from Klocwork specifically targets mission-critical systems, making it perfect for VME/VXS/VPX board-based designs. Of particular importance is that this desktop tool is intended for use by the developer during local build, instead of providing an after-the-fact audit build report. Some of the tricks in Insight have spawned patents, including certain static analysis techniques and system-level collaboration to track bug fixes. The list of features is too numerous to describe here, but highlights include: identification and analysis of critical and security bugs (handy in mission-critical systems); IDE-based code analysis (no need to exit your favorite tool); detailed software architecture visualization; user-defined style or path analysis checkers; bug tracking and reporting – locally or team-based. We are impressed with the potential of Klocwork’s Insight. (Tell us if you have any experience with this tool. We’d love to hear from you at cciufo@opensystems-publishing.com.) Klocwork • www.klocwork.com • RSC# 36761
Save time: Verify PCIe systems With PCI Express now the de facto on- and between-board “bus,” it’s more important than ever to debug signals and protocols. And with now-available high I/O VPX boards, there will be more PCIe lanes than ever traveling around a VME chassis; that’s why it’s critical to make sure those PCIe lanes are working correctly. Mentor Graphics’ PCI Express verification combo consists of the Veloce family of ICE accelerator devices plus the iSolve PCI Express adapter platform. Together, they can verify PCI Express operation, signaling, and I/O connectivity, and even provide real-world PCIe stimulus to in-design VME systems. The typical solution consists of a PCIe-equipped PC, the iSolve adapter, and a Veloce hardware accelerated PCIe ICE. Together, the platform delivers a 1,000 to 10,000x speed improvement over software-only simulation, which “saves weeks or months of regression time.” The solution can identify and fix corner-case bugs in hardware (processor interfaces, bridges, I/O devices, and board traces), and is compliant to both PCIe 1.1 and 2.0. The platform supports all architectures – endpoint, root complex, switch, and bridge – as well as x1, x2, x4, and x8 lanes. Protocols for memory, I/O, configuration, and message transactions are tested or emulated, and interleaved packets across all lanes can be configured. iSolve is flexible, in that it can be configured either for upstream traffic (toward the root complex) or downstream to the endpoint (with emulation in the opposite direction). Mentor Graphics www.mentor.com RSC# 37691, 37692
Editor’s Choice Products are drawn from OSP’s product database and press releases. Vendors may add their new products to our website at www.opensystems-publishing.com/np and submit press releases at www.opensystems-publishing.com/news/submit. OSP reserves the right to publish products based on editors’ discretion alone, and does not guarantee publication of any product entries.
VME and Critical Systems / August 2008 27