Gramma Tech Inc. has won a DARPA contract to develop static-analysis technology for examining multi-core systems. The new technology focuses on identifying concurrent programming defects, which are notoriously difficult to find and manually debug.
“The use of multi-core chips is growing, but it is difficult to maximize the full performance of multi-core technology,” said David Melski, vice president of research at GrammaTech. “Software for multi-core processors must be explicitly parallel, and it must account for the low-level details of how the cores pass data between each other and memory. Static analysis can help developers by identifying errors that commonly occur when programming for a multi-core system. Our goal is to provide a static analysis technology that helps developers avoid the increases in development cost, despite the increase in complexity,”
Research recently released by Venture Development Corp. (VDC) projects strong revenue growth through 2011 in the market for multi-core CPUs in embedded applications. According to Eric Heikkila, director of VDC’s Embedded Hardware and Software Practice, “The embedded multi-core CPU market very much equates to a billion dollar opportunity over the next five years.”
Gramma Tech
www.grammatech.com