[evla-sw-discuss] ThreadX/Interniche, simulation environment & other issues

[Bill Sahr]

Today I had two separate conference calls - one
with ATI (Nucleus), and one with ThreadX & Interniche.


ATI
No a great deal of information that we do not already
have.  However, a few points of interest -

- There are no port dependencies between the toolset
  and the rtos.  However, they are willing to work
  directly with Altium (TASKING) if any issues arrive.  
  Kernel aware debugging for Nucleus is already a part 
  of the TASKING tool set.

- ATI feels that _currently_, they can start work 
  on the port almost immediately, and that they 
  will need ~ 6 weeks for the port and the ethernet
  driver.

- The total price for the software is:
	 ATI    $ 98,550.00
     TASKING    $ 21,300.00
                -----------
                $119,850.00



Express Logic/Interniche
(See attached or inlined file.)
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05/13/2002

ThreadX/Interniche package

Bill Sahr

Simulation Environment
At the request of Express Logic, I had a conference call today with
David Lamie of Express Logic and John Hinton of Interniche.  The chief
topic was simulation environments.  The main point they wished to
convey was that a simulation environment that is as full-featured as
that offered by ATI is available.  Briefly, the simulation environment
consists of a Win32 port of ThreadX, with a port of the Interniche
software to the Win32 port of ThreadX.  An important technical point
is that the Interniche port uses the same NDIS virtual networking
driver (part of Windows NT & 2000) as is used by the ATI simulation
environment.  The end result is that the ThreadX/Interniche
combination has the same capabilities as the ATI environment - i.e.,
Windows applications using the winsock interface can communicate with
the simulation, a standard web browser can connect to the Interniche
web server running within the simulation environment, and the
simulation can communicate with other physical nodes on the network
via the Windows routing capabilities.  All-in-all they made a good
case in support of the notion that ThreadX/Interniche can offer a
simulation environment that is as useful or nearly as useful as that
offered by ATI.  The chief difference appears to be that the ATI
simulation includes _all_ ATI products, even those we do not plan to
purchase or use, some of which may turn out to be of interest to us.
The representatives from Express Logic and Interniche also made the
point that this simulation environment is NOT new.  It would not be a
first time experiment.  Having made that statement, let me add that
each company has used a win32 port of their individual products for
several years, for various purposes, but it is not clear to me that
the _combination_ of their products in a win32 environment is
something they have done before.  Perhaps the _combined_ simulation 
is new.

Tool Set
Green Hills is unwilling to move from the position that they will
charge a $10K to $25K fee for the module needed to add kernel aware
debugging to their tool set if we choose to buy the Interniche software
directly from Interniche.  Express Logic & Interniche are both willing
to use either the TASKING tool set or the Green Hills tool set.  Both
companies have a closer integration with Green Hills.  If we were to
use the TASKING tool set with the ThreadX/Interniche combination we
would lose kernel aware debugging for ThreadX and the scripted version
of the Interniche test suite.  Another difference is that were we to
choose ThreadX and Interniche, we could use the Green Hills tool set
with the Green Hills windows native compiler as the tool set for the
simulation environment and the Green Hills TriCore port for the target
environment.  With the TASKING tool set we would have to use MS Visual
C++ as the tool set for the simulation environment and the TASKING
tool set for the target environment.

RAM, Pricing, and Timelines
To keep life simple, I will assume that we purchase the Interniche
software directly from Interniche and use the Green Hills toolset.

ThreadX		~ 32.0 KB	$12.5K, 3 seats

Interniche
NicheStack	~ 45.5 KB	$12.0K, 3 seats

Ethernet
driver		~ 5.5 KB	$ 2.0K
(Interniche)

WebPort		~ 23.5 KB	$12.0K

Shell		  unavailable

Telnet
server	          available, but not of use if no shell

Total RAM        106.5 KB, no shell, no telnet

HTML 
Compiler	  N.A.          $ 3.0K, but fee may be waived

ThreadX
TC11IB port       N.A.		$10.0K

Green Hills
toolset,
3 floats	  N.A.		$23.7K

Green Hills
ThreadX KAP	  N.A.		$10K - $25K


ThreadX 
Win32 port	  N.A.		$12.5K, ? # of seats

Interniche
port to		  N.A.		Will include in purchase
Win32 version			price of NicheStack
of ThreadX

MS Visual C++
  or              N.A.		?
Green Hills
Win32 compiler 

		Total price     $ 97.7K  to $112.7K, NOT
				including the toolset for 
				the simulation environment


Comments:
1.  Either the HTML compiler or a file system is required for the
    WebPort web server.

2.  We do not get a shell if we go with ThreadX.

3.  Green Hills has single & double precision floating point 
    libraries for the TriCore.  TASKING has only single
    precision.

4.  Green Hills has generic support of the TriCore family, but
    no TC11IB specific support.


Timelines
Express Logic has just undertaken a large contract which will delay
the start of the work.  They estimate that they will need 6 weeks to
do the work.  It could take them as long as 6 weeks to get started.
At this point in time, the best time estimate they could give me is
2 weeks to 16 weeks.  They explained the figure of 2 weeks by saying
that if we wanted to throw money at the issue, they could put more
people on it, once those people were available.  My feeling is that we 
are looking at not less than 6 weeks before the work is started, and 6 
weeks to complete it, so call the total time 12 - 16 weeks.

Interniche could start the work in 10 days and need 7 days to do it.
The rtos port must be completed first.  I will be charitable and
assume that the 10 days needed before start of work by Interniche will
be absorbed by the time needed to port the rtos.

So, total time for the rtos port * ethernet driver:  13 - 17 weeks.