Companies To Distribute Trialware of Each Other’s Software
Colorado Springs, Colo., September 28, 1999 – I-Logix Inc., and Altia, Inc. today jointly announced a development and distribution agreement whereby Altia will integrate Altia FacePlate 4.0, a new simulation graphics software product, with I-Logix’ Rhapsody® , a family of Visual Programming EnvironmentsTM (VPE), and Statemate® MAGNUMTMproducts. Under the agreement, I-Logix and Altia will offer each other’s products as trialware to their respective customers. Sales and support of the products will be handled by the individual companies respectively."I-Logix was one of the first embedded software solutions companies to recognize the value of Altia’s graphics as a communications tool throughout the development cycle," stated Altia President Mike Juran. "With this new agreement, we will be able to strengthen our ability to work closely with I-Logix to help our respective customers shorten both their design and implementation processes and their time-to-market. We look forward to supporting the entire family of I-Logix products with Altia FacePlate in the near future."
Altia FacePlate uses libraries of pre-built interactive animated graphics in a ‘drag-and-drop’ development environment. These interactive graphics simulate controls such as knobs, toggles, sliders and joysticks, and output devices from gauges, strip charts, and digital readouts to LCD displays. Even complex, market-specific devices such as aerospace artificial horizons, automotive cruise controls, and cell phones are available in animated graphics libraries to help embedded systems engineers create high- quality front panels for their simulation models without programming or graphic design expertise.
I-Logix’ Rhapsody allows real-time embedded software engineers to graphically analyze, design, implement, and test real-time embedded applications. From graphical concept to production quality code, Rhapsody provides a rapid iterative development environment resulting in shorter time-to-market and higher quality embedded applications. By providing a graphical connection to the runtime application, the Altia/Rhapsody interface gives real-time designers the ability to both stimulate and monitor the real-time embedded application as generated by Rhapsody. This connection greatly facilitates the debug process and shortens the overall development cycle of real-time applications.
I-Logix’ Statemate MAGNUM enables system engineers to specify the behavior and functionality of complex embedded systems through graphical models. These models can then be simulated or used in a rapid prototype in order to validate and debug the systems’ specification. By allowing engineers to simulate the specified behavior of a system before any actual component of the system is developed, Statemate allows system design errors to be identified and corrected early in the design stage, saving product development time and project budget. The connection to Altia’s Faceplate allows users to quickly create realistic graphical user interfaces to the system under design, compressing, debugging, and validation cycle time.
"Altia Faceplate’s powerful, photo-realistic graphics and Statemate MAGNUM’s hybrid system modeling, analysis and rapid prototyping tools create an unbeatable combination," said Gene Robinson, president and CEO of I-Logix. "This easy-to-use integration with Altia FacePlate will be a big boost for our customers in the automotive and aerospace industries where Statemate MAGNUM has rapidly become the standard for specifying the embedded software. In addition, our customers developing real-time embedded software in industries such as telecommunications, medical electronics, consumer electronics, and office automation will benefit greatly from the Altia/Rhapsody connection. Now, real-time software developers can debug their application from the user’s perspective much more quickly and accurately."
"FacePlate addresses a long-standing need within the embedded systems and software design industry," said Altia’s Juran. "The marketing value of simulation software such as Statemate MAGNUM and Rhapsody, coupled with realistic simulation graphics, has been established for several years. Before FacePlate, many graphics packages were too complex and costly, requiring a long learning curve and graphic design expertise. Alternatively, simpler software packages, which included pre-designed graphics, were too rudimentary, lacking necessary functionality and professional appearance. FacePlate addresses these tradeoffs with feature-rich, ‘drag-and-drop’ component graphics that appear dimensional and realistic."
The Altia FacePlate design process takes a few minutes and begins by assembling ‘drag-and-drop’ graphics components from libraries. A finished design is then connected to Statemate MAGNUM or Rhapsody by simply clicking on signal names in FacePlate. When the simulation is run, FacePlate’s front panel not only exhibits the final product’s proposed behavior, but also provides a good working representation of how it will look as a finished product, displaying real-time data and information. Non-technically oriented customers and managers can view, and get a clearer understanding of, the proposed interface design and even interact with it to test features and functions. "In effect," Juran said, "What you see on the computer monitor, and how the prototype reacts, is close to what you’ll get."
About I-Logix
I-Logix is a venture-backed, privately owned software company dedicated to providing enterprise solutions for real-time embedded applications development. I-Logix’ solutions enable embedded engineers to meet the dual demands of time-to-market compression and exponential increase in application complexity. I-Logix’ products allow engineers to graphically model the behavior and functionality of embedded systems, analyze and validate the behavior through simulation and animation, and automatically generate target-deployable application code directly from the graphical model.I-Logix’ technology supports the entire design flow, from concept to code, across an enterprise, through an iterative approach called ROPESTM (Rapid Object-Oriented Process for Embedded Systems), or through a customer’s own process. I-Logix’ solutions enable users to accelerate new product development, increase competitiveness, and generate quantifiable time and cost savings.
Founded in 1987, the company is headquartered in the U.S., with direct sales offices in North America and Europe, and distributors in Asia. I-Logix focuses on six vertical markets consisting of aerospace/defense, transportation, telecommunications/networking, consumer electronics/office automation, medical devices, and industrial automation. I-Logix can be found on the Internet at http://www.ilogix.com.
About Altia
Four Hewlett Packard embedded systems developers discovered a customer need for host-based graphics tools to prototype instrumentation front panels. These engineers spun-off and founded Altia, Inc. in 1991, a privately held company.Altia’s primary mission is to enhance the value of system simulation tools by expanding markets for these products through development of simulation graphics software. More than 1,500 licenses of the company’s flagship product, Altia Design, have been sold worldwide, while the need for graphics software in embedded systems development is continuing to expand rapidly.
Altia, Inc. is located at 5030 Corporate Plaza Drive, Colorado Springs, CO, 80919. Tel: 719-598-4299, Fax: 719-598-4392, Web: www.altia.com
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Statemate and Rhapsody are registered trademarks of I-Logix Inc. Statemate MAGNUM and ROPES are trademarks of I-Logix Inc. All other products or company names mentioned are used for identification purposes only, and may be trademarks of their respective owners.
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