Why Use OS Simulator?

• Reduce testing effort by using a host rather than the resource restricted target platform
• Simulate a complex system on one host machine and save money by eliminating the need for using expensive target platforms
• Perform modular testing by connecting application modules loosely via a simulated communication interface

 
Using OS Simulator as a Virtualized Testing Platform

OS Simulators provide the ability to simulate, test and run an entire system of C/C++ applications developed for Linux/POSIX, micro-ITRON, pSOS, Windows, VxWorks, Nucleus and ThreadX on a host PC for the target OS. It allows applications to take full advantage of powerful resources like CPU, memory, drivers, middleware and tools on the host platform so that testing of the application can start before those target components are ready. Following are the OS Simulator benefits when used as a Virtualized Testing Platform.

• OS Simulator allows you to do modular testing
  - Modules can be broken down into separate processes with dedicated heap memory
  - Ability to develop the low level communication mechanism across modules using user shared tiered memory pools
  - Load modules dynamically from a module (or) statically via the command prompt
• Easy to simulate and test the low level hardware interface either on shared memory or via a device driver thread/process
• Can load other modules dynamically from any module (or) also statically load via command prompt
• OS Simulator allows a standalone application (block) as a separate fully independent process and can also be dedicated to run on a single core under SMP
• OS Simulator allows interdependent multiple applications (blocks) as individual processes, which can interact and share resources that are not marked private

Frequently Asked Questions about OS Simulator

Q : How is MapuSoft’s OS Simulator different from that of that of an OS Vendor Solution?
A: MapuSoft’s OS Simulator is designed to give the best simulation environment. OS Simulator consists of AppCOE – A powerful eclipse based IDE as its base with OS Abstractor & other interfaces. While other advantages are as follows:

• Most OS Vendor solution are not provided in full source format like MapuSoft's solution and offers no customization
• OS Vendor’s solutions will work for testing simple applications only as a single process. If one block (module) breaks, then all stops
• OS Vendor’s solution will prevent you from directly utilizing native middleware/stack/tools/drivers
• OS Simulator allows application to use OS Abstractor APIs or allow access to native OS APIs
• Takes full advantage of the OS kernel to provide enhanced performance
• OS Simulator puts the focus on testing the application and not the OS components
• OS Vendor’s solution will lock your test platform to one OS/vendor and prevents you from testing any other types of applications (POSIX, VxWorks, Windows, uITRON, etc.)
• OS Vendors provide little support for their kernels as they compete with the real product sales. Further, they only support certain host configuration
• With Mapusoft solution, you can generate performance metrics for both application and platform to analyze performance

Q: What simulators are available from Mapusoft?
A: The following simulators are available: