S2 Technologies offers software verification platform for new dual-mode wireless handset

S2 Technologies (S2), the leader in embedded software verification, has announced the STRIDE 2.1 Embedded Software Verification Platform, a scalable, embedded verification platform that enables the development of software integral to the new wireless digital handsets supporting both standard cellular telephony and push-to-talk two-way radio service. STRIDE ensures the delivery and carrier acceptance of each handset in record time.

“As the complexity of software in embedded systems grows, engineering teams find themselves with quality issues that are preventing timely delivery of new products,” said Steve Balacco, senior analyst with Venture Development Corporation. “It’s time to rethink how embedded development and testing are performed.”

The new dual-mode wireless handset platform supports industry-leading walkie-talkie, phone and data services while integrating a sophisticated software platform that typically serves applications such as phonebook manager, calculator, speakerphone, calendar, world clock, voice recording, assisted Global Positioning Services (GPS) and text messaging.

“The challenge of developing handset software is compounded by the complexities of integrating software from a global software supply chain of distributed development teams, outsourcers, third-party technology vendors, chipset partners and even open source,” said Mark Underseth, CTO of S2. “Software methods and practices, especially for testing and integration, need to be scalable and applicable to all software suppliers to effectively manage complexity.”

Embedded software development, integration and verification continue to be challenging, time-consuming and inconsistent, often resulting in costly product delays and unpredictable software delivery. To address this problem, S2 offers the STRIDE embedded verification platform, which provides reusable, automated testing to support process optimizations and best practices, while enabling development teams to more effectively validate and integrate code. The result, as demonstrated in the dual-mode wireless handset development effort, is a software engineering strategy that emphasizes early and continual automated software testing to build in quality at the outset, provide better visibility into software stability and increase the predictability of product releases.

“As embedded software complexity continues to increase, development teams need a common software testing infrastructure to aggregate, manage and automate the continuous integration of their collective software components. STRIDE provides a scalable software verification framework with developer-centric testing technology to address the challenges of validating and integrating complex embedded software,” Underseth concluded.

STRIDE 2.1 employs a unique approach of integration with and adaptation to the embedded software environment, whether it consists of actual target hardware, off-target simulation environments or other virtual target platforms. By promoting early verification of software that often comes from multiple sources, STRIDE 2.1 enables engineering organizations to more readily test and assure the reliability of integrated software earlier in the development process. STRIDE 2.1 provides developer-centric features such as the following:

· Remote interfacing with access to both function-call APIs and messaging interfaces
· On-target interface tracing with profiling and record-and-playback
· Dynamic interface interception to simulate or replace embedded software interfaces.

These features enable engineers to exercise their code during implementation without writing test code. In addition, they can write and validate tests prior to

coding and reduce dependencies on other developers or software, thus enabling earlier verification and improving parallel development. By utilizing the capabilities of STRIDE, engineering teams can implement automated regression or continuous integration.

S2 Technologies