Phoenix Announces the Release of ACPIArchitect Advanced ACPI Development Tool
SAN JOSE, Calif. — November 17, 1997 — Phoenix Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:PTEC) — the leading supplier of standards-based system enabling software for the PC industry today announced the production release of ACPIArchitect, an advanced development tool designed to automate the development of ACPI Source Language (ASL) code.
The ACPI specification gives PC operating systems the ability to monitor and control system configuration and power management.
"PC '98 certification requires ACPI, which is written in a new, complex language," explained Steve Andler, Phoenix Technologies' vice president of marketing. "Phoenix developed ACPIArchitect as part of a full suite of ACPI firmware solutions and development tools that make it easier for manufacturers to make their systems compliant."
"ACPI is a key component of Microsoft's OS directed power management (OSPM) for Windows 98 and Windows NT 5.0. ACPI makes system power management and configuration more efficient and robust," said Patrick Franklin, Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Corp. "Microsoft is excited that Phoenix, a leader in ACPI system BIOS, is providing tools to accelerate ACPI development in the marketplace with the production release of their ACPIArchitect utility."
"Pre-release versions of ACPIArchitect have been included with Phoenix ACPI BIOS support for OEMs including Compaq, Fujitsu, Hewlett Packard, Hitachi, IBM, Micron, Mitsubishi, Mitsubishi Apricot, Quanta, Samsung, Sanyo, Siemens Nixdorf, and Sony," Andler said.
"ACPIArchitect was developed based on requirements received from engineering teams around the world. We used feedback from these prominent PC OEMs and other major industry leaders such as National Semiconductor and SMC to make ACPIArchitect one of the most efficient, time saving tools available today."
"Phoenix's ACPIArchitect is a useful tool because it automates the generation of ASL code for a new platform," said Sadao Fukatsu, director systems architecture of Fujitsu Personal Systems, Inc.
"Fujitsu uses the tool because it saves us time and allows us to work more on differentiating features and less on standard support. The time to market savings allow Fujitsu to offer leading industry technologies to our customers before any other manufacturer."
ACPIArchitect offers several services to increase the effectiveness of engineers developing ACPI support:
— Automatic code and template generation for devices, resources, and tables.
— Generic ASL for all ACPI-defined devices plus COM, LPT, DOCK, FDC, IDE, KBC, motherboard, audio, and other system components.
— System-level support for embedded controllers, user defined library items and interactive on-line help.
— Support for all ACPI tables.
— Automatic inclusion of features defined in BIOS configuration.
"When we first started working on ACPI support, we spent a lot of time developing the exact ASL code for the device capabilities in a customer's system," said Doug Stohler, director of deployment engineering, at Phoenix Technologies.
"With the new automatic conversion capability in ACPIArchitect, we can take configuration information already developed for PhoenixBIOS 4.0 support and generate appropriate ASL code for a customer's specific system needs. It saves time and money for our customers and gets their systems to market quicker."
As Arman Toorians, Phoenix's Engineering Director in charge of ACPI development explained, "Our customers, and our own engineers, helped us understand how we could improve their ability to develop ASL code. ACPIArchitect generates pure ASL code, but with extensions that make it easier for engineers to understand what's being controlled and what options have been selected. The result is more accurate ASL support, with much less work."
Phoenix Technologies is the leading innovator and supplier of enabling software and services fundamental to personal computers, servers, peripherals and information appliances. Headquartered in San Jose, Calif., Phoenix Technologies Ltd. is a publicly traded company (NASDAQ:PTEC) with offices worldwide including Geneva, London, Munich, Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo. Information on Phoenix Technologies products is available at www.phoenix.com .
CONTACT:
Phoenix Technologies, Ltd.
Howard Emerson, 714/790-2033
[email protected]