Kozio Announces the Availability of a Structured, Language-Based Environment for Embedded System Verification

LONGMONT, Colo., May 10, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Kozio, Inc. (www.kozio.com), the leading provider of In-System Diagnostics today announced ValidationAssistant™, a unified, interactive, embedded hardware verification environment that simplifies hardware control, automates test execution, and conveniently maintains test cases in a structure that maximizes reuse across the entire product life cycle:  Engineering, Production, and Field Test.  This PC-based application interacts with any Device Under Test (DUT) executing Kozio's bare-metal In-System Diagnostics software. Other capabilities include easily-accessible high level commands customized for each specific design and an intuitive point and click interface that together accelerate the control and execution of functional board-level tests. Through a single command, an entire board can be tested within minutes, at the hardware's full operating speed.  

"We have seen significant benefit with our use of kDiagnostics®, enabling us to accelerate our development cycle while increasing test coverage, and ultimately achieving design approval ahead of schedule," stated Peter Long, Hardware System Architect, Raymarine PLC. "We see tremendous value in a product like ValidationAssistant and have purchased several licenses of it as we view the migration to Validation Assistant the next logical step, aiding the integration of design and development in the UK with manufacturing in Eastern Europe and the Far East."

"While electronic designs are becoming more complex than ever before, today's business climate requires that developers deliver reliable products to their customers in ever shrinking time-to-market windows," stated Clint Ostrander, President & CEO, Kozio, Inc. "Kozio continues to innovate solutions that help our customers accelerate the development of embedded products without sacrificing product quality or increase their risk of defect escapes."

A New Paradigm for Integrating Hardware and Software on Electronic Devices

Previous methods utilize terminal emulators to interface from the target to the host. When using this method, firmware engineers are required to write the embedded code for menu and prompt creation and modify it for each new design.  It can be extremely time consuming when engineers have to write new diagnostics and a new user interface for each new design and also when operators have to learn a new interface.  Rarely can the same process and interface be leveraged from one project to another, wasting valuable engineering resources. With ValidationAssistant, command-sets for each new design are automatically loaded through a structured file, eliminating the need to learn different commands, options, or user interfaces. Even infrequent users have an easy way to quickly execute target commands. When a user wants to alter the menu or add new commands, they simply edit the text file and they have instant access to their newly created commands. They only have to learn one user interface and can reuse that knowledge on future projects and devices. In addition, ValidationAssistant exposes all levels of test options including: suites, diagnostics, test methods and low-level commands.

The ValidationAssistant Environment

The ValidationAssistant environment provides a convenient, fast and common method for validating and programming components on the target device through the click of a mouse. Key aspects of the hardware design are automatically validated.  Regression testing is supported to uncover any new errors after changes have been made to the hardware.  The solution uses an interpreter that runs directly on the processor of the target device. Whether users need to program an EEPROM, NAND, NOR, FPGA, CPLD or other programmable logic device, the interface and method makes the task straightforward and fast. ValidationAssistant provides an ideal environment for individuals to collaborate and share knowledge about integrating hardware and software on electronic devices. This knowledge is exchanged in the form of kDiagnostics scripts, device configuration settings, and working initialization sequences.  

kDiagnostics Suite

The complete Kozio solution is a suite of software tools for board diagnostics, binary image downloading, in-system programming, automated board testing, and power-on self-test. The Kozio architecture has two main components: a target diagnostics application and one or more host applications. kDiagnostics Suite includes kDiagnostics − a binary application personalized to your hardware, that executes from the CPU on your processor-based embedded system − and a single license of ValidationAssistant™ − a host-based application that provides a graphical user interface for interactively executing tests, downloading images, performing in-system programming of devices such as Flash memory, and troubleshooting assembly or design errors.

About Kozio, Inc.

Kozio provides software solutions that transform the process of developing embedded electronic products. Engineers using Kozio's powerful kDiagnostics Suite can automatically validate hardware designs, optimize system performance, and simplify the painful process of integrating new hardware with new software, all with a single flexible platform solution that is easily extensible across the entire product life cycle:  Design, Manufacturing, and Self-Test. Working collaboratively in a common environment, engineers realize increased productivity, accelerated time-to-market, improved product quality, and  reduced risk of field failures. Whether developing wireless mobile devices, network equipment, or industrial control systems, our customers are efficiently accelerating their rate of innovation to meet the demands of increasingly competitive and rapidly evolving global markets.

Media Contact:
Kozio, Inc.
Debra Layton
Director of Marketing
303.776.1356, ext 117
[email protected]

Kozio, the Kozio logo and kDiagnostics are registered trademarks of Kozio, Inc.  kPOST, ValidationAssistant, SequenceRunner, and SequenceReporter are trademarks of Kozio, Inc. All other trademarks and products are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Kozio, Inc.