ChipCrunch.com

Let’s face it, as much as we would like our chips to work at the desired frequency and voltage levels, when the in initial silicon comes back, we are happy if we can simply get past a basic boot. Things are not likely to improve with the ever smaller process sizes which are no friend of variation, nor are they going to get better with developers integrating an increasing number of cores and IP from many sources into a single System-on-Chip (SoC). With a few exceptions, most engineers dread spending weeks in the debug labs trying to figure out which paths are causing the issues. So what would make sense going forward? How about a vastly improved application-level debugging and profiling platform specifically targeted at SoC devices that is generic enough to work with different architectures while still enabling the capture of detailed system operation? Enter UltraSoC Technologies, a startup based out of Cambridge, UK that was spun out from the University of Kent in 2005.  The company is developing what it calls UltraDebug, a tool that is supposed to provide all the features we mentioned above and is specifically targeted at embedded systems and multi-processor SoCs. Given the current career opportunities, it seems that the product will be based on Eclipse C/C++ Development Tooling (CDT). Unfortunately, this is just about all UltraSoC is revealing for now. In addition to UltraDebug they are also working on a tool called UltraOptimize that is supposed to aid the engineer with profiling and performance measurements. UltraSoC recently raised about $600K in capital from the South East Seed Fund and Iceni Seedcorn Fund, which is to be utilized for the continued development and marketing of UltraDebug.