Virtutech announced new metrics that solidify the company’s position as the VSD platform vendor of choice for electronic systems developers. Virtutech also announced it has appointed David Pefley as the company’s first chief financial officer.

Virtutech customers are discovering the tremendous impact of the Virtutech Simics platform to fundamentally change their business and development processes and thereby to bring time to market advantages through acceleration of software development. As a result, Virtutech is experiencing a growing demand for the Simics platform across all dimensions of the marketplace with:

• More than 10,000 Simics end users based on licenses issued
• More than 100 processors and virtual platforms deployed based on ARM, Intel, MIPS, Power Architecture
• More than 1,000 devices modeled on Simics and immediately available in the platform model repository
• Simics has become the defacto commercial standard for enablement and development on Power Architecture
• More than 30 Fortune 500 companies rely on Virtutech

“Not only is Virtutech taking a lead in driving development standards for the VSD industry, we’re also continually raising the performance bar for VSD with updates to the Simics platform and in the game-changing ways our customers and partners are deploying Simics,” said John Lambert, CEO of Virtutech. “Virtutech Simics remains the only electronic systems development platform that allows for a revolutionary change in the product development process at a full system level rather than a component level.”

In June Virtutech demonstrated the ability of its Simics VSD platform to affect business change with its announcement that Freescale Power Architecture ecosystem members were deploying Simics to develop software for the new Freescale QorIQ P4080 multicore processor well in advance of silicon availability. Simics is enabling Freescale to significantly shorten its design-win cycle; at the same time, its RTOS partners Green Hills Software, MontaVista Software, Wind River, CodeSourcery and 6WIND are deploying Simics for the competitive advantage of being able to sell their software tools to end customers much earlier than ever before.

Earlier in 2008, Virtutech assumed a high standing role in promoting standards throughout the VSD industry both through its continued involvement with Power.org as well as its new membership in Eclipse.org, OSCI and Spirit Consortium, and in collaboration with GreenSocs. Within each of these organizations, Virtutech is leveraging its expertise within its customer base accumulated over the course of deploying the Simics platform since 2001 to propose, promote and support best practices, conventions and standards for VSD. The ultimate goal is to drive mainstream acceptance of VSD throughout the electronic systems development business.

On the product front, Virtutech Simics solidified its position as the only solution that delivers the four most important criteria for successful virtualized software development: speed, scalability, model availability and control. Virtutech announced version 4.0 of its flagship Simics development platform, which debuted Simics Accelerator. Simics Accelerator is designed specifically to boost performance and scalability of large-scale simulations, including features such as memory page sharing and multi-threading support, which leverages the multi-core aspects of their host environment.

Early in June, Virtutech announced the fastest mixed level of modeling simulation supporting SystemC as well as C-based models with its Simics SystemC Bridge. This was followed shortly thereafter by Virtutech and Freescale’s joint announcement of a Hybrid Simulation capability to solve the critical need performance analysis and optimization of the system-on-chip (SoC) model when developing for complex multicore processors.

In a recent study, IDC noted that the initial total available market for Virtutech and its Simics product is just over $1 billion. “Virtualized software development is an important advance in the development and maintenance of applications for electronic devices,” said Stephen D. Hendrick, group vice president for application development and deployment research at IDC. “There are a number of unique advantages specific to VSD when compared to traditional approaches that include faster time to market, cost-effective scalability, and more advanced diagnostics.”

To accommodate Virtutech’s growing market presence, Virtutech appointed David Pefley as the company’s first chief financial officer. A seasoned financial management expert and software industry veteran, Pefley helps support Virtutech’s growth both in the United States and worldwide. Pefley has more than 20 years experience in financial management, most recently as senior vice president, CFO and board member of Yield Dynamics where he led the company to a successful acquisition. He has served in various financial management positions, including corporate controller at KLA-Tencor Corp for 10 years. Pefley served as the vice president of finance for Aspect Development, Inc. during the acquisition of the company, the largest merger ever in the software industry. He also held financial management positions at EDA pioneer Daisy Systems and at National Semiconductor. He holds a B.A. in economics from University of California, Davis and an M.B.A. in finance from Cornell University.