You Can't Afford Anything Less than the Best Software Development Solution

The Cost of an Embedded Software Development Solution
is not an Important Consideration

The cost of a complete embedded software development solution is insignificant compared to the total cost of developing the software for an electronic product. The fully burdened cost of a software developer is over $150,000 per year. This is far more than the cost of the most expensive embedded software development solution. Yet an embedded software development solution provides all of the tools that embedded software developers need to do their jobs nearly every minute of every day. Without embedded software development tools embedded developers could not do any embedded software development. The quality and capabilities of the embedded software development solution that you select will determine your time to market and your development cost as well as the manufacturing cost of your electronic product. It also determines the capability, performance and reliability of your product. The cost of an embedded software development solution is so small compared to the total development cost of an electronic product that it is foolish to save money on your embedded software development solution if you need to make even the smallest sacrifice in quality or capability. A less capable embedded software development solution will directly increase your out of pocket development cost. It will cost you even more in higher manufacturing costs. But these costs are insignificant compared to the loss of revenues and profits that you will suffer due to lower performance, lower reliability, and delays getting your product into volume production.

Time to Market and Development Cost are Important Considerations

Getting your software debugged enables you to redeploy your development team to a new development project. The longer it takes you to debug your software the more it costs you to develop it. Our industry leading MULTI embedded software development environment has the most advanced software debugging technology. It will drastically reduce your debugging time, slashing both your time to market and your development cost far more than it costs to deploy.

Just one minor bug that causes a traditional RTOS to randomly crash, lock up, or glitch every day or so, will probably take more than a week to isolate. Our INTEGRITY RTOS would probably have isolated that bug within minutes after the first time the software was run. On a one year development schedule, each such incident increases your development costs by 2%. This a large fraction of the cost of having purchased INTEGRITY in the first place, even if you ignore the much larger revenue loss from being a week late to market.

Reliability is an Important Consideration

Traditional real time operating systems, such as VxWorks and pSOS, can be crashed by any bug in even the most insignificant part of the software. In contrast, our INTEGRITY real time operating system automatically detects and identifies, during software development, nearly all of the bugs that would crash, lockup, corrupt, or cause maddening random glitches in your electronic product if you used any other RTOS. Our INTEGRITY RTOS is so reliable that it has been selected to run the avionics, radar, and weapons systems of more than twenty different models of military fighter jets, bombers, and helicopters. Yet, INTEGRITY is smaller, faster, and less expensive than traditional real time operating systems, making it ideal for any commercial electronic product from an ink jet printer to a telecommunications switch.

Performance is an Important Consideration

The compiler and the performance analysis tools, if any, that come with your embedded software development solution determine the performance of your electronic product and the cost of the processor that it will require. The processor represents a large fraction of the manufacturing cost of many electronic products. The best commercial compiler used with the most effective performance analysis tool can usually increase the performance of an embedded program by more than 20% over an ordinary compiler used with ordinary software development tools. A 20% increase in software performance can be utilized to reduce your processor clock speed reducing your manufacturing cost and/or it can be used to increase the performance and the sales price of your product. When the higher sales price from higher performance combined with the cost savings from a lower speed processor is multiplied by the total lifetime production volume of your electronic product, the cost of our embedded software development solution usually fades into insignificance. If you doubt that anyone can increase the performance of your software by 20%, contact our Production Cost Reduction Service experts for a free evaluation.

Memory Usage is an Important Consideration

The compiler and the memory analysis tools, if any, that come with your embedded software development solution determine the amount of memory that your electronic product will require. Memory costs represent a large fraction of the manufacturing costs of many electronic products. The best commercial compilers used with the most effective memory analysis tools can usually reduce the memory required by an embedded program by at least 10% compared to an ordinary compiler used with ordinary software development tools. Our optimizing compilers can probably reduce your memory cost by 10%. When the cost savings from using less memory is multiplied by the total lifetime production volume of your electronic product, the cost of our embedded software development solution often fades into insignificance. If you doubt that anyone can reduce your memory usage by 10%, contact our Production Cost Reduction Service experts for a free evaluation.

Using Proper Evaluation Criteria is Critical to Your Success

In the evaluation of an embedded software development solution the things that you should evaluate are the effect they have on your time to market, development cost, performance, reliability, and manufacturing cost. The difference in cost between embedded software development solutions from different vendors (including "free" RTOSes and software development tools) is insignificant compared to the differences in their effects on your development cost, manufacturing cost, product sales, and rate of return on investment. Your success in a fiercely competitive market depends on selecting the embedded software development solution that will enable you to develop the most capable software in the least time at the lowest cost, while achieving the highest performance and the highest reliability at the lowest production cost.

Anything Less Than the Best is Just Too Expensive

Selecting a real time operating system and an embedded software development solution because it is less expensive or "free" is "penny wise and pound foolish." It will cause your electronic product to get to market late with less performance, capability, and reliability. It will also increase your development and manufacturing costs. You can't afford this kind of handicap in a fiercely competitive market.