Open Virtual Platforms is an important technology that will allow the industry to standardize on the underlying framework for creating virtual platforms and models. 
System and software developers can now take the same industry leading verification technology and methodology being used on the design of their SoC for verification of the virtual platform before sharing it with application developers, or of the complete application software system.
OVP has enabled our software development team to streamline the development process overall. In addition, the Azul OS boots just as fast on the OVP platform as it does on the SoC. 
Open Virtual Platforms enables IP providers like VinChip to add more value to our product line. 
The rapidly evolving realm of ESL modeling tools is a vital ingredient in the growth of multi-processor SOCs. This OVP Initiative introduced by Imperas has the potential to be a catalyst in advancing the rate of growth of MPSOC designs. 
OVP provides another channel for MIPS to expose SoC architects and embedded software developers to our processor IP, and makes it easier for our customers to port applications to our processors. 
As the enabling technology for embedded software development, Imperas believes that a software virtual platform infrastructure should be free and be freely available. 
OVP promises to help resolve the increasing difficulty of embedded software verification and debug by enabling a new generation of tools. 
With the integration of the OVP simulator and Cadence's Specman Elite ISX tool, we can now add advanced verification capabilities including coverage-driven, constrained-random verification. 
The hardware virtual platforms we have used previously for firmware development are just not fast enough for embedded software development. OVP will allow us to satisfy our customers and grow our business. 
OVP will enable a community discussion around embedded software verification, helping our customers to implement better verification methodology and in the end promoting better and broader use of our verification products. 
OVP is awesome. I'm working on large, many-core systems, and was able to get a 1024 core system running in minutes.
Open source, OVP system modeling tools are an important part of the ESL design flow, linking software developers to advanced system-level hardware design methods. 
Open Virtual Platforms enables our customers to easily and quickly verify their system level design prior to using our tools for implementation. 
The alignment of OVP with the TLM-2.0 standard helps address one of the critical requirements for the successful deployment of virtual platforms, which is the ready availability of processor models. 
Beyond Semiconductor is excited to have models of our processor IP available for the embedded software community through the open source OVP initiative. 
Finally! With OVP we have a group of people and companies that realizes that software verification and debug has not yet become a solved issue and also understands that it is not a trivial problem. 
The fundamental excitement around the OVP launch is due to the ability for the industry to coalesce around an open infrastructure and enable real software development earlier in the design process. 
With a holistic approach to system/software modeling, OVP presents an innovative way for them to manage the testing of embedded software. 
By making generally available a valuable and critical technology resource, OVP will provide a common technology foundation that accelerates the mainstream adoption of practical end-to-end design solutions. 
Open source software has certainly changed the landscape in numerous software markets to date, and in VDC's opinion a move toward this type of a model has the potential to alter the dynamics of the current market. Welcome to Imperas™
Imperas (pronounced ‘imp-ear-as’) is a young company providing the best Virtual Platform and Virtual Prototyping solutions.
By adopting Imperas virtualized software development tools, embedded products can be completed sooner, cheaper, and with higher quality.
On March 3rd, 2008, Imperas made much of its simulation and virtual prototyping technology public and freely available - providing the infrastructure for the future of software virtual platforms and enabling the next generation of embedded software development. This initiative, called Open Virtual Platforms™ enables embedded software development to be done on virtual platforms. The technology includes free open source models, much documentation on the APIs and a simulator to download. The simulator is free for evaluation and non-commercial usage.
If you would like to look at a presentation regarding OVP™ have a look at:
To see the support that OVP is getting from industry users, processor IP providers, and tool vendors click here.
To visit the website and download the simulation package and open source models of ARM, MIPS, ARC, NEC, PowerPC, openCores processors, platforms and peripherals and see how to very easily build your own simulations of your embedded platforms click here.
On the launch of OVP, Simon Davidmann, CEO, Imperas was interviewed by EDACafe, click to watch:
The future of System on Chip architectures is to have more and more processors, initially being loosely coupled, but longer term with applications split over many tightly coupled processors. Software for these multi-core chips will become the worst nightmare the chip industry has faced - already software is the most expensive part of high end chips and multi-core just exacerbates this. These future chips require a whole new generation of tools to develop them and Imperas was created to solve these challenges.
With initial products focusing on ease of verification, debug, and analysis for software virtual plaltforms that involve multiple processor cores, Imperas provides a development environment to enable complex software to be developed and debugged for MPSoCs easily and efficiently.
Key to the Imperas product’s effectiveness is the ease of getting models into the environment and the ability to work with all leading software development tools. Imperas products make you more efficient with your existing tools.
Fast Virtual Platforms with flexible MP Debug are the key to the development of complex software on multi-core devices and Imperas technology now part of the Open Virtual Platforms initiative provides the most advanced solutions - really helping customers get working software with their silicon into products quickly.
If you need a software development environment that will simulate and run your multi-core software faster than real time, upto the 1,000,000,000 instructions per second range with full multicore debug capabilities then you need to be using Open Virtual Platforms.
Imperas sells its products worldwide with an engineering base in UK.
If you are facing challenges of getting software to run on complex multi-core platforms - then contact us at [email protected].
OVP™, OVPsim™, Open Virtual Platforms™, and Imperas™ are trademarks of Imperas Software Limited.