Winner of Ada Europe optimization competition announced

York, UK, 22nd June 2010 Maciej Sobczak has returned home with an 8GB iPod Touch after winning the Ada Europe optimization competition organised by Rapita Systems. Dr Ian Broster of Rapita Systems (standing, right) presented him with his prize after running a half-day training session on software optimization which Maciej (standing, left) has since described as “eye opening” and “refreshing”. Specially designed for embedded software developers and managers who need to engineer reliable, embedded software, the tutorial highlighted some of the common misconceptions and pitfalls of traditional approaches to solving timing problems. Ian then presented a solution which identifies code that contributes the most to the overall worst-case execution time, asks “what if?” questions about the outcome of optimisation, and targets optimisation effort where it will have the maximum benefit for the minimum cost. 13 attendees from Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil and the US were in the beautiful Spanish city of Valencia for the opportunity to test their optimization skills with and without the RapiTime tool set. With RapiTime Maciej successfully managed to optimise worst-case execution times on his code by 33%. Maciej, who runs software engineering consultancy firm Inspirel, said “the tutorial was extremely interesting and the personal traits of Dr Broster allowed him to keep the audience highly involved. It is not very common to see lecturers that have such natural ability to foster interactions with the group.” “The tutorial was extremely interesting in that it opened our (I know this after discussions with other participants) eyes to the fact that ‘optimization’ can have several meanings.” “Most of the material that relates to optimization is focused on the average processing time or on the throughput without any regard to the worst-case execution time. The biggest contribution of this tutorial was a simple revelation that even though the average processing time earns dollars in websites and databases, it is the WCET that can crash the airplane or mess up the production line in a factory.” “The repeated focus on that aspect of timing was very refreshing and from the comments and interactions with other participants it was clear that this perception was widely shared.” “I also found it very interesting to see your analysis tools in action - they are very different from typical profilers.” Find out more about Inspirel by visiting www.inspirel.com For more information about the software optimization tutorial contact Dr Ian Broster on 01904 567747 or email ianb@rapitasystems.com For more on Rapita Systems Ltd call Andrew Coombes on 01904 567747 or email acoombes@rapitasystems.com