SYDNEY, Australia – September 29, 2004 – Altium Limited (ASX: ALU), a leading developer of Windows-based electronics design software, today released version 8.5 of its TASKING C166/ST10 software development toolset.

The C166/ST10 CrossView Pro debugger instruction set simulator now supports full peripheral simulation, enabling developers to validate their software through simulated interaction with the outside world before hardware testing.

Crossview Pro Debugger with Peripheral Simulation and SFR Access

Simulator supported peripherals include:

• General Purpose Timers
• Interrupt System
• The C166/ST10 Peripheral Event Controller
• Parallel Ports
• SSC/ASC Serial Ports
• PLL
• Watchdog Timer
• Real Time Clock
• A/D Converter
• CAPCOM timer module

"This is a major step forward for Tasking" explained Bill Giovino, Executive Editor of Microcontroller.com. "Full peripheral simulation is a quality feature offered by few tool manufacturers. This new feature additionis a significant leap for Altium-Tasking in the performance of their compiler toolset"

The CrossView eXtension Language (CXL) can be used to control the simulator behavior when testing application code. You can feed data to and fetch data from the debugger, evaluate expressions and return the results to the running program through this scripting language. This allows you to automate the simulation process and test with a wide range of data sequences.

Altium has also added a new license manager that enables licenses to be  ‘checked out’ from, and returned to the license pool on the server so that they can be used on a laptop.

A new Remote Evaluation Board Access Server enables remote debugging of target hardware over TCP/IP. Additionally, the CrossView Pro debugger now enables the use of CrossView’s eXtension Language, CXL, for automated simulation tests, and has plug-and-play support for new evaluation boards available from Altium’s partners.

Other enhancements to Version 8.5 of the TASKING C166/ST10 toolset include ‘huge memory model’ support, additional memory allocation functions, and increased configurability of MISRA C compliance checking. Support for the Infineon C166 derivatives, such as the C165H, C166S and XC164CM, and the STMicroelectronics ST10M397, is also included.

Pricing and availability
Prices for the TASKING C166/ST10 toolset, consisting of the TASKING EDE, C/C++/EC++ compiler, assembler, linker/locator and CrossView Pro OCDS, ROM monitor and simulator debugger start at US$2,650, and is available for PC/Windows and SUN/Solaris platforms; other platforms are supported on request.

About Altium Limited
Altium Limited (ASX: ALU) is a global developer and supplier of electronics design software for the Microsoft Windows environment. Founded in 1985, Altium released the world's first Microsoft Windows–based printed circuit board design tool in 1991 and continues to provide advanced, easy-to-use and affordable software design tools to electronics engineers, designers, and developers worldwide. Altium's products offer tailored solutions covering a range of hardware and software design processes including the Nexar, Protel, P-CAD and TASKING brands. Altium is headquartered in Sydney, Australia and has sales and support offices in Australia, the United States, Japan, Europe and China.