Virtio’s Virtual Platforms have done much to improve the time to market for several semiconductor manufacturers by allowing them to create and test silicon even before they have fabricated a single chip. Virtual Platforms provide a complete simulation of a hardware environment. Because of this they offer similar advantages to handset manufacturers by allowing them to create their user platforms and specific phone implementations before any real hardware is available.

“The main focus of our activities at the show will be around working with our semiconductor partners to show the handset manufacturers what they can achieve in improved time to market by using our Virtual Platform technology,” says Filip Thoen Virtio Corporation’s Chief Technology Officer.

To this end they expect to be showing a Symbian OS port on the VPOM-2420 a virtual board emulating the first OMAP 2 chipset, the OMAP2420 from TI. This should also including integration with some of the Symbian OS development tools to show application and kernel level debugging. In addition they may also be showing a virtual board emulating a chipset based on Freescale’s latest MXC architecture.

For developers a visit to the stand is worthwhile because not only will Virtio be demonstrating the OMAP2420 virtual platform, they will also be announcing a special partnership program that will enable developers to start software development projects well before traditional silicon development kits are available.

“Virtio is the only company that can provide a complete emulation solution which truly enables early software development,” says Filip. “Through the demonstrations on our stand we hope that handset manufacturers will see how we can help improve their development lifecycles and that third party developers will see that our technology will soon help them create their solutions earlier.”

You can also find out more about Virtio at its web www.virtio.com as well as in this earlier SymbianOne feature.

For more information on the Symbian Expo visit the Symbian Expo web site at www.symbianexpo.com.

See more Symbian Expo previews on our Symbian Expo Coverage page.