	Virtualized Systems Development (VSD)
is a new approach to the development, integration, test and deployment of electronic systems. With VSD, developers can to do the "impossible".

VSD: Virtualized Systems Development

In the 1999 movie (US) “The Matrix”, the main character “Neo” found that in a virtual world, he could do things that would otherwise be impossible. One memorable scene from the movie showed him dodging bullets by bending back and forth at hyper-speed.

Similarly, Virtualized Systems Development™ (VSD™) enables “impossible” approaches to the development of electronic systems. The benefits extend across nearly every phase of product life cycle – all the way from definition, to development and finally deployment.

VSD enables developers with new approaches to system architecture definition, software development and systems integration, and customer demos, support and training. VSD is used by developers for systems of any complexity from a single System On Chip all the way up to network distributed compute farms.

What Problem does VSD Solve?

In just a few years, electronic systems have become exponentially more complex. Systems now employ a variety of processor types, operating systems and application stacks that until recently would not have been combined within a single product or solution. Unfortunately, as these systems have grown in complexity, the development tools and processes that were refined when single processors and basic client/server architectures were the rule, have not kept pace.

How Much can VSD Reduce Cost and Schedule?

VSD can result in substantial development cost savings between 35% and 50%, with schedule reductions between 20% and 25%. These values are corroborated both by reports from VSD adopters and by industry-accepted, software development cost and schedule estimation models. VSD does this is by improving the ability to detect and correct bugs earlier and faster, and by improving the parallelism of software and systems development tasks.

VSD Parallelizes Tasks for Compressed Schedules and Reduced Costs

Because VSD introduces a set of new capabilities, and new perspectives on systems development, the adoption of VSD within an organization is an evolving process. As VSD is used, more models are created, developers become more familiar with what can be done and the resultant value and benefit of VSD grows too.

What is a Virtual Platform?

“Virtual Platforms” are used as the target for software development. They are best described as functional models of physical platforms. A virtual platform can represent a basic board with just a System-on-Chip and memory, a complete platform with multiple processors, or a complex system made up of hundreds of network-connected boards, chassis and racks.

There are no virtual limits: From SoC to Full System

The accuracy and fidelity of the model must be such that the target software is unable to distinguish the virtual platform from physical hardware; it runs the same binaries and behaves exactly like physical hardware. When these high fidelity virtual platforms are combined with a feature-rich simulation environment, developers can define, develop, deploy, and integrate target-specific firmware, operating system kernel, device driver code, application and communication stacks even while the hardware design and production progresses in parallel.

Virtual: Better than Real?

Not only does a virtual platform simply replace a physical platform, but it enables development techniques and approaches that are not possible with physical hardware. Some of these capabilities include:

Checkpoints/Snapshots - Freeze it, save it, restore it, and run - just as if you had never stopped
Easy to Share, Re-Use and Deploy - It's Virtual: Models are computer files, so are checkpoints
Full System Stop - Instantly freeze the whole system, in its running state, and then debug
Run-to-Run Repeatability - If you've seen a bug once, you can hit it again on the very next run
Reverse Execution - It's easy to solve problems after they've happened! Run the whole system in reverse - use hardware and software breakpoints to quickly find bugs
System Visibility, Control and Fault Injection - Nothing is hidden from developers - everything can be modified and controlled
Scripting and Automation - Precisely automate data streams, control, and interaction of any virtual platform
Flexibility & Scalability - Just modify system configuration scripts to run and test a different number of CPUs on a board, a different number of boards in the system, or almost anything else

Learn More

Virtualized Systems Development White Paper

The VSD Whitepaper provides in-depth coverage on the above topics and with additional detail around:

Benefits of VSD for Engineers, Quality Assurance, Managers, and Marketing
What makes a virtual platform so powerful?
How to Adopt VSD in your Organization
Building Models and Virtual Platforms for VSD

Virtualized Systems Development Video

The VSD Video is eight minutes in duration and describes Virtualized systems development (VSD) in terms of its affect on developer work flow and the benefits that these changes bring.