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Compuware Launches DriverStudio 3.1 to accelerate the Driver Development Lifecycle

Announcement posted by Bass PR 22 Jan 2004

DriverStudio 3.1 Offers Full Support for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003; and Creates Windows Device Drivers in the C Programming Language
Compuware Asia-Pacific has released DriverStudio 3.1, a suite of tools that accelerates the driver development life cycle and promotes the development of high-quality Windows device drivers including integration with Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003.

With DriverStudio 3.1, device driver developers can write, debug, test and tune high-quality driver code that meet the strict quality standards for Windows Hardware Quality Labs (WHQL) certification. A device driver is a program that controls a particular type of device that is attached to your computer. There are device drivers for printers, displays, CD-ROM readers, diskette drives, and so on.

Logitech, a market leader in digital hardware, has been using Compuware DriverStudio products for years to create and maintain drivers for their mice, keyboards, cameras and game controllers.

According to Fred Swan, Marketing Director, Interactive Entertainment, Logitech: "Our development teams find the DriverStudio suite to be effective, efficient and highly reliable,"

"The object-oriented structure and wizard functionality of DriverStudio allows us to create drivers three times faster than we could with traditional driver development tools. And, by setting breakpoints, we can also quickly and easily find any problems in our code. DriverStudio enables us to rapidly create 64-bit drivers for our game controllers. The Visual SoftICE UI and the ability to remotely debug AMD64 systems over a network are just two features of DriverStudio 3.1 that really make this new version exciting to us."

The C and C++ programming languages are the primary languages developers use to write device drivers. To support developers' needs, the DriverWorks and DriverNetworks components in DriverStudio 3.1 now offer a new DriverWizard that lets developers build Windows device drivers in either C or C++ programming languages.

DriverStudio 3.1 also offers expanded platform support. Visual SoftICE now offers full support to debug device drivers and applications on AMD's 64-bit Opteron and Athlon64 processors. Also, SoftICE now supports VMware 4.0.

"The release of the Compuware DriverStudio 3.1 is a clear indicator that both Compuware and AMD share a commitment to innovation and performance," said John Robinson, country manager, AMD Australia & New Zealand. "AMD64 technology follows the evolutionary path of the industry-standard x86 architecture, allowing development of a unified 64-bit computing infrastructure which is fully compatible with today's 32-bit software applications."

Also new in DriverStudio 3.1, BoundsChecker Driver Edition now allows users to change their configuration settings without having to reboot. This feature can be turned on or off using checkboxes in the "Settings" dialog box, making device driver development easier.

TrueTime Driver Edition has been enhanced giving users the capability to merge two or more instrumentation files into a single file and compare performance data against previous profiling sessions to validate any changes to the code. Also, data from system performance counters can now be collected providing developers with more detailed and precise information. Additionally, TrueTime Driver Edition's new "Custom Chart" provides an integrated, customizable display of all function, IRP and performance data. This gives developers the capability to monitor and display information from performance counters.

Peter Pritchard, Marketing Manager, Compuware said: "Device driver quality plays a critical role to the successful market delivery of device drivers. So providing driver developers with reliable driver development tools is key."

ENDS

About Compuware
Compuware Asia-Pacific, a leading provider of software and technology services, delivers industrial-strength solutions for the enterprise-computing environment that dramatically improve productivity, quality and performance across the application life cycle. For more information about Compuware, please visit: http://www.compuware.com.au