BusinessWire
February 22, 2006 09:00 AM US Pacific Timezone

PrismTech Announces Spectra PE, adds Radio Platform Modeling, Code-Gen and Docs to Spectra SE's Waveform Capability

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 22, 2006--PrismTech: Radio platform assemblies and device managers now covered in the Spectra Tools for SDR developers. Superior productivity and code quality, correctness and consistence. Built by SDR developers for SDR developers!

PrismTech(TM), a leading provider of productivity tools and middleware, today announced the addition of Spectra(TM) PE (Professional Edition) to its software defined radio (SDR) modeling tools. Spectra PE adds radio platform modeling and enhanced automatic document generation to the Spectra SE (Standard Edition) functionality.

The Spectra SE and PE Modeling tools ensure that SDR developers are not required to be experts in numerous advanced technologies in order to be productive. Spectra SE is for designed for waveform developers. Spectra PE is designed for both waveform and radio platform developers.

Both Spectra SE and PE provide innovative and rich SDR modeling environments unmatched by generic UML (Unified Modeling Language) tools and come complete with auto-generation of XML descriptors.

Spectra SE and PE provide a fast, visual approach to architecture design all in a single SDR-specific tool. They thus support modular development, the outsourcing of relevant functionality (if desirable), and a common reference methodology for developers and systems engineers.

Based on a powerful and complete meta-model which captures the relationships, semantics, best practices, and constraints of the SDR domain, Spectra SE and PE provide a state-of-the-art MDA (Model Driven Architecture) and DSL (Domain Specific Language) modeling environment for components, applications, platform assemblies (PE only), and device managers (PE only). The meta-model allows programmers to express their design intentions directly in domain-specific architecture terms; i.e. in a declarative application-domain-oriented manner, as opposed to indirectly and more circuitously through technology-domain-oriented artifacts.

Thus Spectra SE and PE Editors/GUIs are uniquely user-friendly. The prime goal of these editors is to be as graphical and declarative as possible; i.e. not be form- or dialog-based. In addition to this rich and easy-to-use interface, built-in constraints help guide the developer to avoid defects and design errors that would otherwise only be found at runtime. The editors make it extremely easy to do the right thing and almost impossible to do the wrong things, while also allowing some 'wiggle' room to do some unusual (but valid) things.

Spectra editors also provide facilities for the user to filter, layer, and hide sections of the application or view the application or combinations of sections with just one mouse click. There are 12 unique Spectra editors, so one can view the application on a component basis, a port basis or an assembly basis. Vitally, these editors are seamlessly integrated into a single workspace.

Importantly, Spectra SE and PE also seamlessly integrate with the Eclipse development environment and as such, combine easily with other commonly-used development tools (such as CDT, configuration management, and various UML modeling tools) to create a complete SDR workflow solution. Non Eclipse-based stand-alone tools are at a serious competitive disadvantage today, with all leading tool vendors now supporting or migrating to the Eclipse framework.

Spectra SE and PE are complemented by Spectra Code Generators and the Spectra Operating Environment (OE). The code generators generate a complete set of build artifacts for the platform of choice. So Spectra uniquely provides a total, integrated solution; not only for general purpose processors (GPPs), but also for digital signal processors (DSPs) and Register Transfer Logic (RTL) devices (e.g. FPGAs).

"The vast experience of PrismTech's SDR and SCA experts is embodied in Spectra SE and PE," said Jerry Bickle, Chief Scientist, SDR Products, PrismTech. "We know the real challenges that waveform and radio platform developers have traditionally faced. So we are very pleased to be able to offer an elegant and fully integrated modeling solution that makes their lives a lot easier and delivers significant productivity gains."

Further information about Spectra SE and PE is available from PrismTech's website at http://www.prismtech.com/spectra.

About PrismTech

Founded in 1992, with offices in the USA and Europe, PrismTech is a privately held software products company. PrismTech serves international Fortune 500 customers in the telecommunications, data communications, defense and aerospace sectors. PrismTech is an acknowledged leader in productivity tools and middleware, with solutions ranging from wide-scale integration to embedded real-time systems, supporting applications from operations support systems (OSS) through to software-defined radio (SDR). For additional information about PrismTech, visit the web site at http://www.prismtech.com.

Spectra is a trademark of PrismTech. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners