Green Hills Probe Extends Device Software Optimization to Manufacturing

“The production and manufacturing phases of a product are often just as important as a product’s design and implementation phases,” noted David Kleidermacher, chief technology officer, Green Hills Software. “There is no return on the millions of dollars invested in a product’s development until that product successfully reaches volume production. Based on our own experience in manufacturing three generations of debug probes, as well as 25 years of close collaboration with thousands of our customers, we’ve designed Probe for Manufacturing to help reduce time-to-volume production by optimizing the testing and configuration of devices as they come off the assembly line.”

“Combining novel features like Web 2.0 with deep and broad support for traditional manufacturing validation requirements, such as device troubleshooting, memory testing, and efficient flash programming, Probe for Manufacturing is a refreshingly creative solution to production and manufacturing needs,” said Jerry Krasner, Ph.D., chief analyst, Embedded Market Forecasters. “By bringing the interactive features of the latest Web technologies to manufacturing, Green Hills Software’s Probe for Manufacturing will make production testing systems easier than ever to design and deploy.”

Probe for Manufacturing uses an on-board Python interpreter with full access to all traditional debug probe run-control functionality so that production engineers may devise any conceivable test for their manufacturing line. A Web 2.0 user interface lends a friendly face to all of this power. Since every Probe for Manufacturing component is written in Python, the user interface can be customized to any requirement, and can be run on Probe for Manufacturing or a desktop PC. Scripting and Web files are all stored on an ultra-reliable, wear-levelled, journaling, flash file system residing on Probe for Manufacturing.

Probe for Manufacturing also comes with the Green Hills Debug Client, a library that enables production test system designers to integrate existing PC-based test interfaces with the Probe for Manufacturing. With the Green Hills Debug Client, test infrastructure designers can take advantage of the speed, connectivity, and debugging features of Probe for Manufacturing without creating new or modifying existing human-machine interfaces.

Probe for Manufacturing provides built-in support for programming virtually every NOR flash part in existence, with fine-grained scalability of total memory usage from zero bytes for the smallest systems to hundreds of kilobytes for ultra-fast programming of larger systems.

Based on the Green Hills Probe V3 platform, Probe for Manufacturing supports a broad set of CPU debug ports, including IEEE 1149.1 JTAG, at the highest speeds. With download rates in excess of 10 MB/sec and sustaining JTAG TCK rates over 100 MHz, Probe for Manufacturing will dramatically speed up production testing.

Probe for Manufacturing is powered by Green Hills Software’s INTEGRITY, the leading market share high-reliability real-time operating system. INTEGRITY’s wide support of industry standards like POSIX enabled the creation of a probe that melds the latest Web and desktop technologies with the high level of robustness required for high-volume manufacturing test systems.

Probe for Manufacturing is available now for devices based on ARM, MIPS, and PowerPC processors. Additional device support will be available in Q2 and Q3 2007. It is compliant with RoHS, PSE, and CEC standards.