CriticalBlue Announces Software Development Environment for Renesas Electronics' Dual V850E2M Core MCU Platform

Prism now Supports the Renesas Electronics V850E2v3 Instruction set Enabling Users to Target and Optimize Software for Renesas Electronics' Dual V850E2M Core Platform

SAN JOSE, California, September 7, 2010 - CriticalBlue, a pioneer in embedded multicore software analysis,
exploration and verification tools, announced today immediate support for the
Dual V850E2M Core architecture by Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:
6723), the world's number one supplier of microcontrollers, within
CriticalBlue's Prism product. Software developers will now be able to analyze
their existing software applications and quickly assess the tangible benefits
of migrating to Dual V850E2M Core platforms.

This announcement continues the deepening of Prism capabilities to enable
leading multicore vendors such as Renesas Electronics to provide an ecosystem
to their customers which clearly demonstrates the differentiation of the
V850E2v3 architecture when running customers' own software applications on
Dual V850E2M Core platforms. Prism is an award winning Eclipse-based embedded
multicore programming system which allows software engineers to easily assess
and realize the full potential of multicore processors without significant
changes to their development flow. Prism analyzes the behavior of code
running on hardware development boards, virtual machines or simulators. It
allows engineers to take their existing sequential code, and before making
any changes, explore and analyze opportunities for concurrency. Having
identified the optimal parallelization strategies in this way, developers
implement parallel structures, and use Prism again to verify performance
efficiency and thread-safe operations.

The Renesas Electronics Dual V850E2M Core platform is an asymmetric
multi-processor (AMP) architecture containing two 32-bit CPUs. Each core has
local RAM (no wait state) and access to shared RAM of the other core, plus
overall shared RAM (with wait states). There is shared flash for both cores,
and each core has a flash cache which acts like an instruction cache. In the
AMP style programming model, tasks are statically allocated between cores.
Data must be allocated to use efficiently and minimize wait states. For the
Dual V850E2M Core platform, each core can run a real-time operating system,
and message passing may be used. CriticalBlue's development on this platform
marks the first support of an AMP architecture for the Prism product.
CriticalBlue has adapted Prism to support Renesas Electronics" architecture
and the accompanying programming model by providing software execution trace
visualization, allowing the software programmer to see activity on, and
inter-communication between, both of the V850 cores in the system. The user
can then reallocate data or tasks between cores, and Prism will calculate a
schedule including timing changes for synchronizations.

Support for analyzing and optimizing code that contains interrupt support
routines (ISRs) is also an expanded feature for Renesas Electronics' Dual
V850E2M Core platform Prism. Contained in the solution is the capability to
discover the data dependencies between ISRs and the rest of the customer's
software program. Details of when an interrupt occurs and the resulting
behavior can be viewed in Prism's analysis environment, providing valuable
feedback to the software programmer that would otherwise be extremely
difficult to visualize. Ultimately, Prism provides to the user an estimate of
the performance gain achievable by partitioning their program into multiple
tasks and targeting the Dual V850E2M Core architecture.

Described analysis can be done on an existing unmodified software
application running on Renesas Electronics' instruction set simulator.
Experienced multicore software programmers will benefit from Prism's
capabilities in the area of performance tuning and general multicore code
optimization.

A 30 day evaluation copy of the Prism Core PSP for V850E2M can be
downloaded immediately from the CriticalBlue website
www.criticalblue.com/prism/eval/.

Supporting Quotes:

"Renesas Electronics is the worldwide leader in microcontrollers and the
expansion of their V850 series to a multicore platform provides an exciting
opportunity for their customers to increase their systems' performance while
still maintaining the same architectural platform." said David Stewart, CEO,
CriticalBlue. "We are delighted to provide the first multicore analysis and
software development tool for this platform and Renesas Electronics customers
can begin today to plan the migration of their software onto it."

"We have been very impressed with CriticalBlue's Prism for multicore
technology. Their expertise in providing proven multicore solutions for MCU
embedded software truly makes them a leader in the industry." said Masaomi
Ichikawa, associate general manager of General Purpose MCU Systems Division
at Renesas Electronics Corporation.

    Key Points:

    - CriticalBlue is based in Edinburgh, U.K.

    - This relationship helps speed development and optimization of multicore
    software applications and hence accelerates time to market of end
    products based on multicore platforms.

    - Integration with Prism allows Renesas Electronics' customers to analyze
    their existing single threaded application code for use in multicore
    platforms.

    - Prism technology is an Eclipse plug-in and is based on dynamic tracing
    of the users' software execution.

    - CriticalBlue has developed an innovative capability to discover the
    data dependencies between interrupt service routines and the rest of the
    customer's software program

    - Developers can work in a familiar Eclipse environment using both
    Renesas Electronics and CriticalBlue development tools.

    - The Dual V850E2M Core Instruction level PSP for Prism is available
    today.

About CriticalBlue

CriticalBlue is a pioneer of flexible, automated system design solutions
that meet the increasing performance, power, and cost demands associated with
the delivery of advanced electronic products within today's demanding design
schedules. The increasing use of complex, multicore processor architectures
has accelerated demand for CriticalBlue's technology and expertise throughout
all electronic industry sectors. Headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, with
offices in San Jose, California, and Tokyo, Japan, the company has delivered
multiple solutions for key aspects of embedded software design, including
Prism, a multicore embedded software design environment, and Cascade, a
software accelerator synthesis technology. The company is funded by European,
US Silicon Valley, Japanese venture capitalists and corporate investors. To
learn more, please visit www.criticalblue.com

CriticalBlue Media Contact: David Stewart, CEO, CriticalBlue, +1-408-573-3609, david.stewart at criticalblue.com