Working group to address tools for multicore and manycore software development

"The lack of high quality and portable tools has kept system developers from fully utilising the various multicore and manycore devices," said Markus Levy, pictured, Multicore Association president. "Ultimately, SHIM will promote highly optimised tools that can provide efficient utilisation of very complex SoCs and eliminate the need for users to comprehend 1000 page manuals to program all the device features." The SHIM concept was based on a Japanese government funded project, which aimed to build a standardised ecosystem to support a many core hardware/software platform. Amongst companies funded by the program was eSOL, whose general manager of technology Masaki Gondo will chair the SHIM Working Group. Other participants include Cavium, CriticalBlue, Freescale, Mentor Graphics, Nagoya University, Nokia Siemens Networks, PolyCore Software, Renesas Electronics, Texas Instruments, TOPS Systems, Vector Fabrics, Wind River and Xilinx. "Through our work at eSOL," said Gondo, "we have long realised the great benefit of having a standard model for describing hardware architectural features. At a minimum, SHIM will enable us to more easily support successive generations of SoCs from semiconductor vendors without requiring extensive development tool upgrades." SHIM's primary goal is to define an architecture description standard useful for software design. Levy believes the SHIM standard will be flexible enough to allow vendor specific, non standard architectural information for customised tools. While the SHIM standard will be available publicly, vendor specific information can remain confidential.