February 16, 2013. Kozio Inc. has announced the release of the Verification and Test OS (VTOS) Standard and Advanced Packages for Sitara ARM AM335x Cortex-A8 processors from Texas Instruments. Both VTOS Packages provide an out-of-the-box board-based design-verification and debug solution for AM335x designs containing DDR2/DDR3, NAND flash, NOR flash, SRAM, UART and I2C interfaces, and McSPI (Multichannel Serial Peripheral Interface). The VTOS AM335x Advanced Package release contains an additional generic display driver allowing the user to graphically modify a device tree and provide simple display initialization scripts to enable full functional testing of any display.
VTOS provides a complete hardware test environment that helps find hardware design errors more quickly and improve overall design quality. VTOS runs on the prototype hardware without the need for an application OS or test executive. Users can run functional tests, write scripts, transfer files, and trace test execution. VTOS seamlessly transitions to the production test floor saving time and lowering test development costs.
“By releasing VTOS support for TI’s Sitara ARM AM335x Cortex-A8 processors, Kozio will provide a processor-specific design-verification environment, which is ideal for debugging and fault isolation,” said Russell Crane, product marketing managers, Sitara ARM processors, TI. “This makes it easier for developers to accelerate their time to market and deliver high-quality products with reduced risk and cost. TI is pleased to see them reach this milestone and extend its commitment to offer a robust hardware and software ecosystem.”
“Users of the Sitara AM335x processors can now use VTOS to find prototype hardware design errors more quickly and improve overall design quality. In addition, VTOS’s configurability enables users to be running on their AM335x prototype hardware in minutes,” stated Bob Potock, vice president, Kozio. “Kozio will continue to work closely with TI and expand its processor coverage.”
At the foundation of Kozio's embedded design verification and production test solutions is the industry’s first special-purpose OS architected exclusively for embedded design verification and production test. VTOS provides a hardware test platform that includes functional tests, scripting and interactive debug. VTOS is delivered as a binary package specific to the customer’s processor family, which can be quickly configured for your embedded hardware—porting is not required. Configured binaries can be downloaded by the bootloader (U-boot) or via JTAG. VTOS is built to span the hardware lifecycle from design, to production, to field-based power-on self-test. VTOS Suite provides an out-of-the-box solution that can save up to 75% of test program development costs.
Kozio has made available a 30-day free trial of its VTOS Suite for the Sitara AM335x Starter Kit and BeagleBoard.org’s BeagleBone. Visit www.kozio.com/evaluateVTOS to download the trial version.