CARDtools will enable developers to change the software architecture of a system and see the effects. With CARDtools an engineer can design a system around a 68020 microprocessor, check and verify its performance, and then substitute another microprocessor, an 80386 for instance, to compare system performance. The CARDtools package includes tools for: control map building, which provides a hierarchical structure; user-interface prototyping; hardware/software interface prompting for specifications; a package definition facility that lets designers build their own Ada-like libraries; a graphical editor and analysis tool; real-time performance verification; a program design language editor and analyser; and a report generator that produces DoD-2167 documentation.
A key concept behind CARDtools is that of a common database, called a software bus, that provides an open system so that developers can incorporate their own tools, documentation formats, rules, and icons into a CARDtool environment. CARD technology will do for the real-time software engineer what CAE has done for the hardware engineer.
