Bristol, Avon-based Cabot Software Ltd has implemented its Power System development environment on Hitachi Ltd’s SH Super Hitachi 32-bit family of RISC microprocessors, enabling applications developed for other systems to be transferred to the chip set, without the need for recompiling, as long as the application compiles down to p-code. The environment, which enables the developer to write in pseudo machine code, can already be used on the RS/6000, Motorola Inc 68000 microprocessors under a variety of Unixes, and under Macintosh System, OS/2, MS-DOS, CP/M, VAX/VMS and Windows. The company reckons the ability to write in pseudo machine code to create portable programs is a unique offering. The Power System is hosted under MS-DOS, OS/2 and Unix, running underneath it are a variety of compilers; C, Modula-2 or UCSD Pascal, for which the company is the exclusive worldwide licensee. Developers can choose any one of the compilers, or write in a mixture of the languages. They can also use native code generators, but the environment is primarily designed to generate pseudo machine code which produces applications that require about half the memory taken up by programs written in native code. With this ability to produce concise code, Cabot, a five year-old, 10-man company, has targetted embedded applications and Personal Digital Assistants – anywhere where memory is at a premium – as its main market. Hitachi’s chips, which are all designed for embedded applications either as controllers or processors, are designed for the same market. The company said the system is ideal for general applications, say something for interactive television that had to work on different set-top boxes. It sells the development environment mainly in North America and Europe but wants to become better known in the UK; it is considering floating within the next few years. The development environment, its breadwinner, costs about ú350 for a Windows version and more than ú2,000 for a Unix one. The company also says it is currently working with a number of universities on what it describes as futuristic applications for set-top boxes.
