Windows file sharing has always felt a bit magical to me. I
use it all the time, certainly, but I never quite understood how it worked;
it was just this big chunk of Microsoft protocol that felt like it really did not want to talk to
other types of operating systems. Sure, I have used the open-source "samba"
server for a long time with great success… but it always seemed to suffer from
issues with access rights (probably the fault of me and server setup and mixing Unix and Windows accounts, not a
fault in the server itself).
With this background, I was really delighted and surprised when I managed
to almost effortlessly get a Simics target to share and serve files to my
Windows host. A big-endian Power Architecture QSP target at that,
running VxWorks, how cool isn’t that? The key to the puzzle was the Visuality NQ Server from Visuality Systems Ltd. in Israel. It
just worked, and let me try some interesting and educational setups.
Networked systems is one of the primary application areas for Simics. Simics can run many machines inside a single Simics simulation, and apply all Simics features to the system, not just to a single machine inside the system. This is something that Dan Poirot from Real-Time Innovations, RTI, has made quite extensive use of recently. It is a pretty cool use-case for Simics, so we arranged to interview Dan about his use of Simics.
In the 1970's BBC comedy show Fawlty Towers, John Cleese manages to turn harmless everyday situations into total disasters, with very little effort. It is a marvellous example of how to inject faults into what could have been a smoothly operating hotel, and demonstrating just how things fall apart as the unexpected happens. Injecting faults isn't always that easy, unfortunately (or should that be fortunately)?
I have a paper about "Transporting Bugs with Checkpoints" to be presented at the S4D (System, Software, SoC and Silicon Debug) conference in Southampton, UK, on September 15 and 16, 2010. The core concept presented is to leverage Wind River Simics checkpointing to capture and move a bug from the bug reporter to the responsible developer. It is a fairly simple idea, but getting it to work efficiently does require that some things are done right.
Jakob Engblom is Technical Marketing Manager for the Simics product line at Wind River. He came to Wind River with the Virtutech acquisition in March 2010, and has been working with Simics since 2002. As technical marketing manager, he works with the what and how of Simics usage, including actually writing real code.
The postings on this site are the views of the individual poster and do not represent Wind River's positions, strategies or opinions. Please review the Wind River Blogging Guidelines. We may be reached via email at blogs@windriver.com.
Jakob Engblom is Technical Marketing Manager for the Simics product line at Wind River. He came to Wind River with the Virtutech acquisition in March 2010, and has been working with Simics since 2002. As technical marketing manager, he works with the what and how of Simics usage, including actually writing real code.
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