Express Logic and ARM add Industry's First Stack and File System Awareness to ARM RealView Debugger

Business Wire, March 7, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. -- Developers aided by increased visibility into key TCP/IP stack and File System data structures

Express Logic, Inc., the worldwide leader in royalty-free real-time operating systems (RTOS), today announced an industry first--the addition of TCP/IP stack and File System awareness to the ARM(R) RealView(R) debugger's already robust RTOS kernel awareness for ThreadX(R).

Express Logic's NetX(TM) TCP/IP stack for embedded applications, commonly used with the ThreadX RTOS, now can be viewed at the data structure level from the RealView debugger, much like the ThreadX RTOS kernel data structures. Developers gain unprecedented visibility into the TCP/IP stack's data structures and the behavior of applications using the stack. Similar visibility is also achieved with Express Logic's FileX(TM) embedded file system. Key file system data structures are exposed for easy viewing through the RealView debugger.

"The first benefit to such system visibility is that--just as with ThreadX debugger kernel awareness--all the stack and file system resources are one click away," commented William E. Lamie, president of Express Logic. "We have shortened the development time yet again. To dig into the data structures by hand would be much more difficult and time consuming."

"This extension to the ARM RealView Developer Suite is built on our industry-leading halted and running system debug technology, which enables developers to visualize and interact with abstract system data structures while the target system is running or halted," said Rod Crawford, RealView US Marketing Manager for ARM. "This capability empowers developers to rapidly tune and deploy complete system platforms."

The new Stack and File System awareness provides several key benefits to developers. Views in the Express Logic's NetX(TM) TCP/IP Stack provide the following visibility:

--IP--exposes each IP instance in the application. Developers can use it to check for I/O by watching "Bytes Sent" or "Bytes Received" fields.

--Pktpool--gives valuable insight into packet availability in a given pool. If Available Packets is non zero, then the next allocation will be successful. Another interesting field is the Empty Requests field. Each time an allocation request is made on an empty packet pool, this number is incremented. A user might see this and realize that this pool needs to be larger to avoid thread blocking.

--Udp--reveals UDP socket information. The user can see which UDP sockets are actively sending/receiving data.

--Tcp--examines all TCP socket information. A user would use this to see what connections are established (Connect IP & Connect Port) and the State of those connections.

Similarly, Express Logic's FileX embedded file system provides easy vantages:

--Media--indicates the file system's "Cache Size." This tells the developer how many logical sectors can be cached by FileX.

--File--displays standard File information. "Available Size" is the number of bytes allocated to the file before FileX must get more clusters (allocations blocks in FAT).

Shipping and Availability

NetX Stack and FileX File System awareness for ARM's RealView debugger is available immediately as a free plug-in from Express Logic.

About Express Logic

Headquartered in San Diego, CA, Express Logic offers the most advanced run-time solution for deeply embedded applications, including the popular ThreadX(R) RTOS, the high-performance NetX(TM) TCP/IP stack, the FileX(TM) embedded MS-DOS compatible file system, and the USBX(TM) Host/Device USB protocol stack. All products from Express Logic include full source-code and have no run-time royalties. For more information about Express Logic solutions, please visit www.expresslogic.com, call 1-888-THREADX, or email inquires to sales@expresslogic.com.

ThreadX is a registered trademark of Express Logic, Inc. NetX, FileX, CANX, USBX, preemption-threshold, picokernel, UDP fast path technology, are trademarks of Express Logic, Inc. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders.