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Hindsight: Reversible Computing
One of the more interesting tech pieces that came out this week has been Hindsight [PDF]. Hindsight is made by Virtutech and is billed as the "the first complete, general-purpose tool for reverse execution and debugging of arbitrary electronic systems." The demos were received extremely well and it just looks cool.
From reading about this earlier, it is a very exciting technology for embedded systems. It does seem a bit expensive though:
Hindsight will go into beta sites in May, with production slated for July. Incremental cost over Simics is around $5,000 per seat, but Hindsight won't target single seats. A typical engagement, including Simics, Hindsight and some initial model development, is estimated at $200,000 to $300,000 for a software development group with 10 to 20 seats.
I'm a big tall mofo.
From their website, you can get a free academic version of the software as well. At least, that's what the site says (I didn't register to download it, so I can't confirm).
- Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
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This seems to create a virtualization layer where checkpoints are saved periodically, then instructions are single stepped through. So to step back, it goes to the first checkpoint before the instruction you want to step back to, then it single steps up to that point. This would aid in kernel-level debugging where data structures might be overwritten from almost anywhere in the computer that can access the kernel space -- no need to set a watchpoint then reboot and wait for the next error to occur.
Since it is based on the whole-system simulator Simics -- Yes, it does assume that the app runs in isolation, since all external stuff is just simics simulations.
Reversible computing is a way of computing without (permenantly) consuming energy. Look it up if you're not familiar, because it's pretty interesting.
Anyway, the headline is misleading.