Kozio's hardware test software is another great example of the innovative technology that SDC is bringing to the European Embedded sector.

Kozio's software enables embedded engineers to "bring up" new hardware developments in the shortest possible time. This test and verification technology ensures the integrity of the hardware prior to on-board software development, therefore greatly reducing testing and development time.

Kozio specialize in providing such software. Kozio deliver a line of software products that deliver extensive hardware validation knowledge in turn-key packages, offering maximum control. Kozio builds its knowledge base by working with the latest processor reference designs from Intel, IBM, AMCC, and Freescale. This expertise is then built into a finely architected library system, allowing them to deliver a complete solution in as little as four hours. A brilliantly precise tool set, Kozio software was made for organizations that are creating leading-edge technology and are the first to offer dependable products.

The benefits of this technology are considerable and impact both the commercial and the technical aspects of new projects. From a commercial perspective, Kozio provide a complete solution at a fraction of the cost it would take to develop and maintain internally and their solutions will allow you to bring up your new board designs in record time, giving faster time to market. From a technical perspective, Kozio's test coverage will almost certainly surpass your past solutions used to validate new board designs and will free up engineering time to focus on other aspects of the development.

Do You Need Hardware Test Software?

If you design and manufacture processor-based boards, the answer is yes. All processor-based boards require design verification (does it work and perform as designed?), as well as validation (are the parts assembled correctly?). Without specialized diagnostic software with hardware intelligence built in, test results are mediocre, boards are shipped with uncertainty and your company reputation is at stake.

But how much test software do you need? Your company may already have some sort of diagnostics in place. A number of companies today are leveraging free, open-source solutions, while many more rely on the final application for verification and validation. Solutions like these are a lot more costly than they first appear, and very often do not meet the varied demands of hardware bring-up, manufacturing test, power-on self-test, and board certification.

Any reluctance to buy a solution, versus building it yourself, is understandable. Will your overall gains in accelerating board designs and increasing reliability be offset by a lack of control in developing low-level software for your custom design? As a design engineer, you want the best software tool that can be produced, insuring that your hard efforts are not faced with a product recall. As a manager, you want to reduce risk, lower cost and insure you are meeting customer demands.

Kozio delivers a line of software products that deliver extensive hardware validation knowledge in turn-key packages, offering maximum control. Kozio builds it knowledge base by working with the latest processor reference designs from Intel, IBM, AMCC, Freescale and Motorola. This expertise is then built into a finely architected library system, allowing us to deliver a complete solution in as little as four hours. A brilliantly precise tool set, Kozio software was made for organizations that are creating leading-edge technology and are the first to offer dependable products.

A Comprehensive Turn-Key Solution

First software. Kozio provides the first software to run on new processor boards. No other software is required to begin using Kozio's board bring-up product, kDiagnsotics.

Easy to use . Kozio delivers a hardware test solution that is delivered ready to use. Once programmed onto your processor board, a simple terminal emulation interface is used by engineers to verify new designs.

Comprehensive . Kozio delivers complete test suites fully configured to the processor and peripheral chips used on your new board design. Full functional tests validate the various hardware components, such as Memory, Ethernet, Voice, Modem, IDE and the remaining components.

Control . Kozio provides an interpreter, allowing customers to extend the delivered capabilities through scripting. Kozio provides a build environment, allowing you to add your own custom source code routines to the final diagnostics image. You have full control over manufacturing test and POST execution through the simple editing of a text script.

Power . Kozio delivers the power to access all hardware components through the delivered software interface. Kozio delivers the ability to alter the characteristics of how the functional tests operate, changing address ranges, loop control variables, packet contents, and much more. This control is available in real-time, without costly application rebuild steps.

Software Validated on Numerous Processor Boards

Kozio software is first ported to a variety of leading-edge processor reference boards, and then delivered to you pre-validated. Our software is validated using the first boards built using the latest processor technology. Our expertise of the latest processor technology is built right into our software test database.

Kozio software also supports the latest industry communications standards. Our test suites have been used to validate numerous chips supporting the latest communications chip standards, such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, USB 2.0, Serial ATA and many others. Our low-level software and drivers have been validated on numerous processor reference boards, as well as numerous customer boards.

Years of hardware interface knowledge, from a software point of view, has been validated on numerous processor boards and is available to you in a package requiring no development effort.

Software Delivery Automation

At the heart of the Kozio software delivery service is a patent-pending process for accelerating the deployment of application binaries pre-built for your custom hardware. Kozio uses a central database of software modules, allowing us to build compete product lines fully configured to your custom hardware. Our delivery time averages out to less than one week for processor architectures we support, with same-day service achieved in some cases.

This central database of software modules is routinely updated by our development team. The Kozio database contains a diverse library finely tuned to delivering comprehensive test modules for the latest chip technologies. Best of all, this database is used to automatically provide test modules and software reference documents customized to your design.

All library modules are available for execution via a command line interface, through test scripts or via source code APIs, leaving you in control. The library modules provide extensive access and control of numerous features of the design, from low-level PCI manipulation to high-level packet testing for communication peripherals such as Ethernet. Each hardware component has many software interface routines available, all at your fingertips.

A Strong Verification and Validation Solution

Automated or single-step execution . Kozio hardware test software products are not simple diagnostics tools. They offer expert hardware verification and validation that is easy to use. If an automated test suite indicates a failure, you can easily trace its execution to see which step is failing. In addition, you can easily break down the test suite into test primitives. By executing test primitives, you can isolate hardware issues quickly.

Reproducibility . Kozio provides a number of tools, making it easy to reproduce test results. Kozio's script interface allows you to share with others simple text files that contain the steps required to produce a failure. Make design changes and execute the script again, until all issues have been resolved. Save the text scripts for future builds, or include that knowledge in the manufacturing test process.

Continuous and conditional execution . Kozio's script interface allows you to add looping to any test primitive or test suite. You can execute a test once, any number of times or forever. Creating new test scripts is easy, and you can quickly create a script that is perfect for environmental testing. Additionally, Kozio's script interface allows you to add high-level code structures like branching, conditional execution and case statements.

Traceability . Kozio kDiagnsotics allows you to run tests with simple pass or fail results, or run with additional information displaying execution progress. By using trace execution, you can gather additional information regarding issues.

High Return on Investment

One of the barriers to having expert diagnostic tools is the up-front cost in creating them and customizing them to your hardware platform. Some companies have invested years of effort already, and must also invest additional effort each year as new platforms adopt the latest processor and communications technology. Other companies pay little up front, only to pay many times their original cost in support and loss of repeat sales. In all cases, Kozio offers a product option that is unbeatable.

Low purchase price . Kozio provides a complete hardware test solution in multiple products at a price that is less than 10% of the cost required to write a single complete diagnostics application internally.

Very low burden . Kozio requires minimal information in order to port our software applications to your custom board. In most cases, a single-page document provides all the information we need. From that point on, we work on our own and the next exchange we have is to deliver the final products.

Near zero development cost . Kozio products can be used with no additional coding effort. If you wish to extend its capabilities, a complete build environment is provided, along with full access to an extensive library of Kozio software modules.

Low integration effort . Minimal integration effort is required to use Kozio products with other software products such as operating systems. Kozio provides a simple interface for providing power-on test results to the final application.

Low execution costs . Kozio kDiagnsotics is delivered as an easy-to-use application well suited for the board bring-up effort. Using menus and a built-in help system, you can execute test suites and validate entire designs in minutes.

Why Choose Kozio?

We'll use the reasons our customers have provided. Here are some recent quotes.

Price/Coverage . " Kozio provides a complete solution at a fraction of the cost it would take to develop and maintain internally. Kozio's test coverage surpasses our past solutions used to validate new board designs. "

Acceleration . " Kozio's kDiagnostics product allows us to bring up our new board designs in record time. In many cases, kDiagnostics proves our board designs in only minutes! "

Elegant model . " Kozio's model of delivering ready-to-run solutions, with maximum coverage, reduced the time required to verify our new designs. "

Reduction of effort . " By using Kozio's kMfgTest software we were able to free up our software engineering staff from the test automation process, while still gaining the benefit of a significantly reduced production test time. "

Support . " We found the team at Kozio to be very responsive to our individual requirements, technically competent, and great to work with. "

Control . " Kozio products allowed us to remain in control of how the software functions and we were able to extend its capabilities to meet our proprietary needs. "