Virtutech – Observations from Uppsala

New Job, New Simulator

As already leaked by LinkedIn, I recently started a new job at ASTC, as Global Technical Marketing Manager for the VLAB virtual platform product. This is my first major change of job I since I joined Virtutech to work on the Simics simulator back in 2002. It is both a big change and a small change – staying in the world of virtual platforms, but working with a new product that is quite different from Simics. In fact, more things are different and new and fresh than the same…

Time to Do Something New

The time has come to do something new. I am leaving Intel (and the Intel Simics team) at the end of September (2024). After more than twenty years with the team and the product this is a big step into the unknown. But when Intel offered a “retirement” package as part of its current round of cost reduction measures, I felt that it was a golden opportunity to find something new to do.

The TLM DAC

46daclogo The past few days here at DAC, a big theme has been transaction level modeling (TLM).

TLM is often considered to be SystemC TLM-2.0. Most of the statements from the EDA companies are to the effect that SystemC TLM-2.0 solves the problem of combining models from different sources. Scratching the surface of this happy picture, it is clear that it is not that simple…

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Guest Blog at Cadence: “Way Worse than the Real Thing”

avataraspx Virtutech and Cadence yesterday announced the integration of Virtutech Simics and Cadence ISX (Incisive Software Extensions), which is essentially a directed random test framework for software. With this tool integration, you can systematically test low-level software and the hardware-software (device driver) interface of a system, leveraging a virtual platform.

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Getting the Least of our your C Compiler – The Best Article I have ever written?

Back in 2001, while a PhD student at Uppsala University and IAR Systems, I wrote what has to be the most popular and long-lived article I ever did: “Getting the Least out of Your C Compiler“. It was an Embedded Systems Conference class that I also presented in 2002 (after that, I changed jobs to Virtutech and therefore C programming was no longer my official topic). However, the text has lived on. It was featured as a chapter in the “Firmware Handbook” edited by Jack Ganssle, translated into German by IAR Germany, and has popped up in various places from time to time.

Last week, it resurfaced at Embedded.com, with an attribution that was initially wrong.

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