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Companies at the forefront of today's high-technology industry face an ever-present challenge. Product development schedules are compressed while quality, functionality, and performance expectations are heightened. In this demanding arena, haphazard approaches can no longer be tolerated. Development methodologies must be ever better, faster, and less costly.

Fortunately, AcroTek Software has the embedded software development solutions and expertise to meet these challenges. Founded in 1978, AcroTek has been a leader in the embedded software development market for over two decades. More than 50,000 customers worldwide in industries as diverse as communications, factory automation, transportation, and consumer electronics rely on our solutions. AcroTek is uniquely positioned to provide the solid and complete solutions your environment requires.

• AcroTek alone offers compatible development solutions that address the full range of embedded applications, from austere, minimal-resource systems with no real-time operating system (RTOS) requirements, up to sophisticated communication systems running multiple threads, processors, and protocols. Focusing on a single set of compatible tools across architectures and projects enables you to achieve the full benefits of code reuse, cross-training, consolidated support and simplified maintenance.
• AcroTek best addresses the challenges of today's embedded software development process. From our shortened edit-compile-download-debug cycle which dramatically improves user productivity during development, integration and test, to our sophisticated debug support for advanced multithreaded, multiprocessing applications, to our full support for object-oriented development in Java, C++, or C languages, AcroTek stands alone among embedded software suppliers.
• AcroTek's commitment to total quality through all phases of the development process is underscored by our achievement of ISO 9001 certification. Just as your customers trust a telephone or antilock brake system to work, you can be confident that AcroTek is there to ensure the success of your project.
• Today's embedded systems are increasingly built by integrating pre-existing modules, and the industry sees less and less systems being designed from scratch. For many projects, integration and testing now consume more than half the schedule. Reusable intellectual property (IP) components (e.g., microprocessor cores, ASIC libraries, multitasking kernels, and networking protocol modules) and the ability to integrate and test them as early as possible have become critical to success. Under the AcroTek umbrella, AcroTek is in the unique position to streamline your development effort by providing all three key elements of today's embedded development process: design tools, reusable IP modules, and system integration tools for software and hardware engineers.
• AcroTek recognizes that products are just one part of the equation in helping you deliver high-quality products on schedule. We have invested in the industry's largest worldwide service and support organization to provide you with complete customer support and consulting expertise at every stage of product development.

With complementary offerings of tools, Intellectual Property, and services for both hardware and software implementation and co-verification, AcroTek is the leading supplier of integrated system design solutions.

Complete, Yet Open

AcroTek provides the most complete range of products and services available for developing embedded systems software. This ensures you can find an affordable, yet powerful, development environment regardless of whether you are developing a minimal control system or a complex communications application.

AcroTek is committed to supporting standards and providing open solutions. Well-defined interfaces exist for real-time operating systems, device drivers, emulators, simulators, and even processors. These interfaces enable the easy integration of third-party and custom products with the AcroTek environment. As a result, a wide range of industry leaders have partnered with AcroTek to provide complementary products and services, ensuring that everything you need to successfully complete your project is available in one integrated environment.

The AcroTek Product Family

AcroTek supports the ANSI C standard and is committed to supporting the new ANSI C++ standard, including full library support. AcroTek Compilers improve productivity with language extensions that enable you to make greater use of high-level languages. AcroTek Compilers provide specialized support for ROMing applications thereby simplifying the process of matching an application to the target memory map.

Many embedded applications are cost-sensitive, forcing developers to minimize memory and processor resources to reduce production costs. AcroTek Compilers help you attain this goal through powerful optimizations that ensure fast, compact, executable code. AcroTek's innovative optimization technology is especially valuable when developing C++ and Java applications. AcroTek Compilers eliminate the "hidden" overhead of object-oriented language constructs thereby enhancing program efficiency by reducing code size.

Industry-Standard Debugger

AcroTek's Debugger has been the industry-standard embedded software debugger for more than 10 years. It significantly reduces the amount of time needed to identify and resolve problems in your application by tightly integrating the edit-compile-download-debug cycle. By providing a common interface across the many tools required to successfully complete an embedded software project, it minimizes the learning curve for each tool and enables developers to get their products to market faster.

Embedded systems today push complexity to the limits, often utilizing multiple microprocessors and sophisticated real-time operating systems. It is unique in its ability to simultaneously track and display multiple threads of program execution, even when these are executing on multiple processors from different families. These capabilities put it in a class of its own for developers of multitasking or multiprocessing systems.

RTOS: The Foundation of Your Application

AcroTek's RTOS, VxWorks real-time operating system is renowned for its reliability and has been proven in thousands of designs. VxWorks, by WindRiver, is even certifiable under RTCA/DO-178B level A standards which are the highest in the avionics industry. VxWorks offers state-of-the-art performance superior to that of other real-time operating systems and has maintained a 16-year track record of proven upward compatibility. This accelerates development of new applications by enabling you to easily reuse software from previous generations.

VxWorks is highly modular, enabling it to scale to the needs of your application and minimize memory consumption. You can select from a wide range of modules that work together "out-of-the-box." By eliminating the need to write this software from scratch, VxWorks lets you focus on your application and reduces time-to-profit.

VxWorks provides numerous application-specific modules

Automated configuration tools make it simple to build your application software on VxWorks or develop custom board support packages, enabling you to be instantly productive. VxWorks also includes board support packages for popular off-the-shelf boards.

VxWorks Networking Support

In addition to the powerful source-level debugging capabilities provided by AcroTek, the VxWorks Development System also supports the Xpert Profiler. Xpert enables system and application performance to be analyzed and tuned using an intuitive graphical user interface.

At Your Service

AcroTek's commitment to customer service goes well beyond standard product support and training. Our Services organization, dedicated to ensuring your success, is comprised of knowledgeable software engineers with expertise in applications such as telecommunications, computer peripherals, process control, and aerospace. Their skills complement those of your project team, enabling you to focus your resources on what differentiates your product-your application software.

AcroTek can help shorten your time-to-market by accelerating development of both your system and application software. Our expertise in system software enables our Services engineers to quickly develop device drivers and board support packages for custom hardware targets or port third-party networking stacks, such as ATM, Frame Relay, and SS7, to the VxWorks operating system.

AcroTek's Services organization can also speed application software development through the migration of legacy code. Because today's embedded systems are so software intensive, effective reuse of existing code can greatly reduce development time. We have helped customers migrate Pascal and K&R C code to ANSI C and C++, as well as migrate applications from legacy operating systems.

If your project's needs are best met by customizing AcroTek's products, our engineers can develop and support special enhancements. AcroTek also offers services that meet your deployed environment requirements. For example, if your company needs 24x7 support, we can develop a service to match this response. In addition, if your product requires FAA, FDA, IEC, TUV, or other safety certification, AcroTek can provide a total test, documentation, and service solution to meet these stringent requirements.

AcroTek's support services include training courses or on-site visits by our consultants to install, configure and overview our products for you. For help with questions about any products, simply contact AcroTek's technical support organization by phone, fax, or e-mail. You can also instantly access support services through AcroTek's web site.