QNX Software Systems has released QNX Momentics IDE 4, a flexible new integrated development environment that according to the company "combines innovative profiling tools with the latest Eclipse technologies to slash debug times and accelerate the optimization of complex embedded systems."

Enhanced with new visualization features that offer deep insight into system behavior, QNX Momentics IDE 4 now provides the most comprehensive toolset for embedded developers, including tools for coding, building, debugging, testing, and fine-tuning applications. Highlights of the new IDE include:

* Full componentization for fast product updates -- The new release offers the first fully componentized IDE for the embedded market, allowing developers to download the latest tools, feature updates, code samples, and documentation, without having to purchase a major IDE upgrade.

* Visualization tools for multi-core debugging -- Armed with powerful visualization features, these highly innovative tools can detect and analyze complex multi-core behaviors invisible to conventional debug tools. They can identify opportunities for parallelism, analyze thread migration between cores, isolate resource-contention problems, and provide insight into a variety of other conditions specific to multi- core designs.

* In-depth memory analysis for maximum reliability -- The IDE includes a fully revamped memory analysis tool that instantly detects a variety of memory errors and leaks. The tool also introduces a new approach to memory profiling and optimization: a database that records how programs allocate and deallocate memory. Like a personal video recorder, this feature can store and play back a program's long-term pattern of memory allocation, allowing the developer to identify subtle problems that cause system failure.

* Realtime optimization of secure partitioned designs -- Using the IDE, developers can now graphically monitor and optimize systems that use QNX Adaptive Partitioning. The developer can, for example, fine-tune the CPU budget for each time partition or move an application from one partition to another, then immediately gauge the performance improvement -- all from within the IDE. A groundbreaking technology that provides applications with a guaranteed budget of CPU time, QNX Adaptive Partitioning allows developers to achieve higher security and system availability, while simplifying the integration of multiple software subsystems.

* Built on Eclipse Callisto -- The QNX Momentics IDE 4 is the only embedded IDE based on the latest versions of the Eclipse platform (v3.2) and the Eclipse CDT C/C++ development tools (v3.1), both of which form part of the landmark Eclipse "Callisto" release. CDT 3.1 brings a wealth of benefits to QNX Momentics users, including: -- Significantly greater scalability and performance -- the time to index large projects has now improved by orders of magnitude -- A choice of indexing options -- none, fast, or full -- Enhanced refactoring with support for renaming -- developers can now rename a function or a class, and the IDE will update all references to it automatically -- Enhanced drag-and-drop support -- it's now easier to drag code elements and binaries into the QNX Momentics workspace -- Managed Make -- gives developers fine control over their build environment without the need to code and maintain Makefiles; developers can now choose from Standard Make, QNX Projects, or Managed Make -- Improved ability to jump directly to C/C++ definitions -- Powerful DOM-based language model for improved content assist, searching, and refactoring -- The Eclipse platform 3.2 adds enhanced support for large-scale and remote workspaces, Java Archive (JAR) files for a significantly smaller footprint, improved CVS support, improved searching and filtering, and the ability to import multiple projects.

* Time-saving tutorials and cheat sheets -- To further enhance productivity, the IDE now has built-in tutorials and example projects, each of which has a corresponding "cheat sheet" that offers step-by-step instructions. The IDE also features a new installation guide and a new user's guide.

* Enhanced application profiler -- Besides offering faster responsiveness, the IDE's application profiler now performs full profiling of shared libraries and dynamically linked libraries (DLLs). It can also display call-back type calls from noninstrumented to instrumented code.

The new IDE forms part of the QNX Momentics development suite Professional Edition. From board bring-up to remote diagnostics, the QNX Momentics suite provides tools for the entire embedded development cycle, including system builders, C/C++ code editors, debuggers, system-tracing tools, driver development kits, and support for a wide array of ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, SH-4, XScale, and x86 targets.