TASKING's New 68K Tool Suite Provides Easier, Faster Debugging

New Look and Format Makes Compiling More Efficient

Dedham, MA. — January 17, 2000 — TASKING Inc, a leading developer of integrated software tools for the embedded systems industry, today announced the release of its 68K Tool Suite V9.2 with time-saving enhancements that ease development and debugging pressures. These enhancements demonstrate TASKING's continued commitment to deliver the most stable, up-to-date tool suite on the market, a legacy it has held for ten years. The tool suite, which includes TASKING's Embedded Development Environment, optimized C and C++/EC++ compilers, and CrossView debugger, now features an instruction set simulator, ROM monitor and BDM execution that reduce debugging time, speeding overall time to market.

To meet the increased demands of the market, TASKING's 68K tool suite delivers improved design and developer performance. The capability to define long symbol names, increased number of permissible tokens in an opfile, optimization of C++ inlining and improved EDE performance give the power and functionality needed in many embedded systems. These strengths, set alongside an improved graphical interface, address the ever-demanding needs of customers to maximize developer productivity and fine tune application performance.

"The V9.2 release improves C++ performance, boosts compiler functionality and provides an easier, more responsive interface," explains TASKING Product Marketing Manager Laura Horn. "With this release, developers have the resources they need to deal with complex design issues within tight production schedules."

While continuing to provide the level of compiler quality developers have come to expect, this latest release eases debugging through an improved graphical interface that mirrors the desktop window and dialog model. Designers quickly and easily identify variable contents simply by moving a mouse over the source window using BubbleSpy technology, while enhanced register windows let developers group registers into meaningful sets, such as general purpose, floating point or UART, and display critical registers. Just as the source code window highlights C source in mixed disassembly mode to clearly differentiate source and disassembly code, even so the memory window identifies any memory locations where the contents have changed. Improved clipboard support offers in-place editing capabilities, enabling developers to cut and paste the contents of a window or data entry field. Through these enhancements, TASKING shortens the debugging process, pointing out performance bottlenecks and quickly identifying hard-to-find errors.

Availability
The 68K Tool Suite, V9.2, is available now on Windows 95/98/NT. Customers with a 68K maintenance contract may upgrade to this release free of charge. A demo version of the tool suite is available on the Web from www.tasking.com/products/68K or on CD-ROM from any of the TASKING offices or distributors. Release notes and readme files can be downloaded from the technical support area www.tasking.com/support/68K.

About TASKING
TASKING manufactures and markets integrated software development tools for the embedded systems industry, supporting a wide range of 8-, 16-, 32-bit and DSP devices. The company's integrated development environment, compiler, debugger, embedded Internet and RTOS offerings, coupled with their global support and services, are the most comprehensive available. TASKING's knowledge of embedded systems results from the merger of three companies (BSO, Intermetrics Microsystems and TASKING), each with over 20 years of experience. BSO began the company's long history of innovation, pioneering the concept of cross development in 1974. Headquartered in Dedham, MA, TASKING has offices worldwide, located in the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK. For more information about TASKING, visit their web site at www.tasking.com.

TASKING, the TASKING logo and BubbleSpy are trademarks of TASKING. All other trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.