I have a new blog post up at the Wind River blog network, about the new target analysis tools in Simics 4.4. It is a very fun piece of technology to play with, and you learn a lot just by poking around at existing software systems…
Monthly Archives: May 2010
C in Danger – and thus Higher-Level Languages (?)
Some recent developments among development environments for mobile phones have made me consider the hereto unthinkable: that C might be on a decline as the universal programming language. Indeed, maybe there is even a chance that we will not have a universal low-level language in the future at all. What is happening is that the hitherto “given” role of C as the base language for a platform is being questioned. The reason appears to be security, which cannot be said to be a bad thing. However, a large-scale move away from C might hurt many of today’s higher-level languages and even model-based engineering.
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Pipeline Performance Simulator Anno 1960
I have just found what almost has to be the first cycle-accurate computer simulator in history. According to the article “Stretch-ing is Great Exercise — It Gets You in Shape to Win” by Frederick Brooks (the man behind the Mythical Man-Month) in the January-March 2010 issue of IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, IBM created a simulator of the pipeline for the IBM 7030 “Stretch” computer developed from 1956 to 1961 (photo from IBM.com).