Enea Announces Bare Metal Performance Tools for NetLogic Microsystems' XLP® Multi-Core, Multi-Threaded Processors

Enea Announces Bare Metal Performance Tools for NetLogic Microsystems'
XLP® Multi-Core, Multi-Threaded Processors

Performance Profiling and Logging Tools Accelerate Optimization of
Multicore Bare Metal Applications by Quickly and Easily Identifying
Performance Bottlenecks and Correcting Fault Behavior

STOCKHOLM, Sweden and Santa Clara, California, May 3, 2011 - Enea®
(NASDAQ OMX Nordic:ENEA) today announced an industry first tools
solution for “bare metal” multicore implementations on the NetLogic
Microsystems (NASDAQ: NETL) XLP® multi-core processor, called the Enea®
Bare Metal Performance Tools (Enea BMP Tools). The term “bare metal”
refers to multicore applications whereby a given processor core executes
a function or application without any sort of multitasking executive -
usually a simple control loop that runs in an OS-free environment for
minimal overhead and maximum processing bandwidth.

“As a leading independent embedded software vendor, we are pleased to
offer best-in-class bare metal software tools for NetLogic Microsystems'
industry-leading XLP processors,” said Marcus Hjortsberg, vice president
of marketing at Enea. “Our new Bare Metal Performance Tools solution
complements the NetLogic Microsystems XLP multi-core processor's
software development kit (SDK) with debugging, logging and profiling
support that multicore applications require without degrading system
performance, the main reason for running on bare metal in the first
place,” 

“Enea's Bare Metal Performance Tools, in conjunction with our XLP
multi-core processor SDK, will enable customers to maximize performance
of our breakthrough XLP processors in high-performance data plane
applications,” said Chris O'Reilly, vice president of marketing at
NetLogic Microsystems. “We are pleased to have expanded on our
collaboration with Enea to closely couple a broad range of their
market-leading software products with our industry-leading multi-core
processors.” 

Enea Bare Metal Performance Tools consists of an Eclipse-based host
tools suite called Enea® Optima, a set of runtime libraries and agents
for data collection, and an IPC mechanism called Enea® LINX for
transport of the collected profiling and logging data to the Optima host
tool, or to an external file for later analysis. The Enea Bare Metal
Performance Tools solution is designed as an extension to NetLogic
Microsystems' SDK so that all characteristics of the SDK's software
build, boot/load, and bare metal execution environment (NetOS)
performance are maintained.

Enea Bare Metal Performance Tools focus on the two most useful types of
runtime tools that can aid developers for performance optimization: a)
Performance Profiling, and b) Logging.

Bare Metal Performance Profiling

Profiling helps developers optimize a slow performing application by
visualizing runtime hardware constraints caused by the non-optimized
source code. Enea Bare Metal Performance Tools provide two types of
performance profiling visualization tools:

  · Source Code Profiling - identifies at the source code level where
constraints such as pipeline stalls, TLB misses and cache misses are
causing sub-optimal performance, by matching these hardware
events/counters to the source code at any level of the application
function call tree, even down to individual lines of code in any given
function. This includes overall CPU utilization of any function or line
of code.  Bare Metal Performance Tools offer complete user configuration
control of all NetLogic Microsystems' XLP multi-core processor hardware
counters.
  · Application Profiling - creates and analyzes application software
level statistics with the purpose of profiling the applications overall
performance and behavior. Such statistics could be idle time, throughput
statistics, extraneous hardware events, or any other user defined
statistics that makes sense to the application.

Bare Metal Performance Logging

Logging refers to the ability of the user to insert notifications of
interesting events in the application software. Logs are great tools for
finding and correcting bugs and otherwise identify faulty behavior in an
application even after a software crash, thereby increasing the quality
of the software and ultimately enhancing the end user experience. In
Enea's Bare Metal Performance Tools, both text and binary information
may be collected in a single circular buffer that may be extracted
either continuously or by discreet command. Log data may be forwarded
directly to the host Optima tools suite for analysis or to an external
termination point (file system) for later analysis. Log data may also be
extracted “post mortem” after a crash to help debug the cause of the
crash. The logging facility in Enea Bare Metal Performance Tools may be
employed in both development and in operational deployment for field
debugging and troubleshooting.

The Optima Advantage

Providing some sort of host tool for display of profiling and logging
data is easy. Presenting the information in an accessible manner so that
the user does not have to view and analyze the data manually is more
difficult. Current profiling and logging tools for bare metal
applications often present the information in simple text views. Enea
Optima goes one step further with 2D-3D performance profiling views and
its graphical log analysis views with time sequenced fusion of logs with
filtering and display via log source, log type, or even individual log
data entries from multiple cores in a multicore device or even multiple
multicore devices. With Optima, developers can quickly visualize and
find the serious issues or problems in the system and not “hunt” for
them.

Future Developments

Further plans for development of the Enea Bare Metal Performance Tools
include integration with the recently announced Enea Linux Platform
Builder (ELPB-NE) for NetLogic Microsystems' multi-core, multi-threaded
processors, and also with the 6WINDGate™ multicore packet processing
software from 6WIND.

The ELPB-NE is a full featured Linux development environment for
NetLogic Microsystems' multi-core, multi-threaded processors that guides
the developer from jumpstarting their project, into development and
through to deployment. ELPB-NE includes build and configuration of
NetLogic Microsystems' NetOS environment. Future integration of ELPB-NE
with the Bare Metal Performance Tools will include the Bare Metal
Performance target side components in the overall build and development
framework.

“We look forward to the addition of 6WINDGate support within Enea's Bare
Metal Performance Tools debugging environment”, said Eric Carmès, CEO of
6WIND. “6WINDGate is used by OEMs worldwide to maximize the performance
of networking, security and telecom equipment. The availability of a
bare-metal visualization and debug tool like the Bare Metal Performance
Tools will certainly enable our customers to accelerate their
time-to-market while ensuring the optimum utilization of their multicore
platforms”.

For more information

Nordic:
Catharina Paulcén, VP Corporate Communications
Phone: 46 8 507 140 00 or email:
catharina.paulcen@enea.com (catharina.paulcen@enea.com)

North America
Chris Lanfear, Director of Global Marcom
Phone: 1 617 244 9433 or email:
chris.lanfear@enea.com (chris.lanfear@enea.com)

Asia Pacific:
Fredrik Sjöholm, Vice President of Software Sales Asia
Phone: 46 8 507 140 00 or email:
fredrik.sjoholm@enea.com (fredrik.sjoholm@enea.com)

Europe:
Bénédicte Bissey, Marketing Communications Manager, EMEA
Phone: 33 1 76 91 58 24 or email:
benedicte.bissey@enea.com (mia.akerstrom@enea.com)