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Quoting Kenneth Rucker, senior programmer/analyst of AMR Corp.'s Sabre Technology group. "GPf's ease of use, the quality of code it generates, and the ease of maintaining the resulting application make it the best PC programmer productivity tool I've seen in ten years of writing PC applications. Gpf has cut our coding time at least in half, and probably more."

Gpf version 2.1 also supports C/C++ compilers and automatically generates dynamic linked libraries (DLLs), which allows more modularity of design. Gpf also provides Windows 3.1 support, including the CUA '91 control set, as well as the SQL features of OS/2 2.x.

Gpf version 2.1 is compatible with previous versions of Gpf. OS/2 applications designed with an earlier version of Gpf can be maintained or enhanced with Gpf 2.1. Gpf version 2.1 runs on OS/2 version 2.0 or higher. The program requires a mouse, at least 6Mb of disk space, and 6Mb of RAM. Gpf version 2.1 is priced at $1,295. Registered users of Gpf versions 1.3 or 2.0 can upgrade for $295. For more information contact Gpf Systems, Inc., P.O. Box 414, 30 Falls Rd., Moodus, CT 06469, (800)831-0017; Fax:(203)873-3302

WinScope intercepts selected events and records them in the trace buffer, which the user can search for specific events, display in various ways, print, or save to disk for later examination. Because WinScope captures Windows events in a trace buffer, users can study how an application behaves and how it interacts with Windows and other applications. WinScope can display hierarchical lists of APIs, windows, modules, messages, and hooks so the user can select events to be traced.

WinScope doesn't require source code or debugging information to work. WinScope plugs into Windows' messaging system and API functions at run time, so it provides an inside view of programs that run under Windows, regardless of whether users have the source code. WinScope is priced at $249. For more information contact The Periscope Company, 1475 Peachtree St., Suite 100, Atlanta, GA 30309, (800) 722-7006; FAX: (404)888-5520.

Richard Wirt, Director of Software Technology at Intel, has said, "MetaWare's High C/C++ optimized for Inte1486 and Pentium Processors is capable of taking full advantage of the 32-bit CPUs to deliver high performance applications on a variety of operating systems. At Intel we are working closely with our technology partners to deliver compilers that truly exploit the performance capabilities of Intel silicon."

According to MetaWare, Intel publishes Pentium Processor benchmarks using MetaWare High C as the standard for DOS. Because of MetaWare's prior work with Intel on the Inte1386, Intel486, and i860 Processors, MetaWare's compiler already contained many of the global optimizations and much of the technology needed to optimize for the Pentium Processor, such as advanced instruction scheduling, inlining, and loop strength reduction.

The list price of High C/C++ v3.1 for Extended DOS and Windows 3.1 is $795. Users of High C/C++ Version 3.0 for Extended DOS and Windows may upgrade for $195. Any MetaWare customer with a High C DOS compiler may upgrade their current C compiler to High C/C++ Version 3.1 for $295. For more information contact MetaWare Incorporated, 2161 Delaware Ave., Santa Cruz, CA 95060, (408) 429-6382; FAX: (408)429-9273.

Prosac automatically generates C implementation code in graphical SA/SD/RT modes designed with the Prosa modeling tools. Prosac generates code for both real-time and sequential applications; converts the SA/SD/RT model from the context diagram level into portable ANSI standard C source ready for compiling, linking, and executing; and generates variable declarations supporting C data types such as variables, arrays, structures, unions, and enumerated types. Prosac supports the reusability of SA/SD/RT models, mini specifications, and existing software, as well as concurrent and incremental development, and verification.

The Prosa environment supports IBM PS/2 under Windows 3 or OS/2 PM, VAXStation VMS/DECwindows/Motif, SUN Sparcstation UNIX/Openwindows/Open-look, and AP/Apollo UNIX/Motif with compatible user interfaces and databases. Prosa supports multi-user designs in networked environments. For more information contact Insoft Oy, Kirkkokatu 5 B, SF-909100 Oulo, Finland, +358-81-376 128; FAX: +358-81-371 754.

An obstacle in exploiting the output of profiling tools is the presentation and interpretation of the data they provide. Quantify incorporates graphical presentations, such as the "River of Time" view, which shows function call chains as a tree with the width of branches indicating performance. Quantify also provides listings of the most compute-intensive functions for summarization and presentation of performance data.

Quantify drops into place alongside other tools in a developer's environments, requiring no special compilers, editors, or debuggers. Quantify is non-intrusive, needing only the addition of the word "quantify" to the makefile; there's no recompilation or addition of special libraries. Pure Software claims three key advantages to Quantify: its graphical presentation of data; ease of use (allowing performance problems to be explored and addressed earlier in the development cycle); and its capacity to measure performance for entire applications, including third-party and shared libraries.

Quoting Larry Sole, senior engineer at Synopsys, "After only 30 minutes, Quantify had shown me 2 or 3 pieces of code that I had never suspected to be performance culprits. Quantify told me exactly where I needed to make a change to improve may code's performance."

Quantify supports SPARC workstations running SunOS 4.1.x. Quantify is priced at $1,198 per individual for a simple license. Annual upgrades and support are an additional $250 per license. For more information contact Pure Software, Sunnyvale CA, (408) 524-3094; FAX: (408) 720-9200; email: bkay@pure. com.

According to the KAP/C news release, the preprocessor performs particularly well on three C language benchmarks: alvinn, ear, and eqntott; when running on a 25MHz RS/6000 Model 530, KAP attains speedups of 40% for alvinn, 45% for ear, and 20% for eqntott.

The performance improvement users can expect from KAP depends on the work performed by a particular program, the level of optimization already encoded in the program, and the coding style used for the program. On a single processor workstation, KAP's optimizations are most likely to improve performance of C programs that: use significant computation time; use a large data set (the total size of the data should be larger than the machine's cache, or better yet, the portion of each array being manipulated should exceed the cache size); have significant data reuse within a loop nest, for example matrix multiplication; and have loop nests that use many local arrays. In addition, KAP/C performs pointer and I/O analysis to identify optimization opportunities.

KAP/C for IBM is priced at $595 per user for a floating license. For more information contact Kuck and Associates, 1906 Fox Dr., Champaign, IL 61820, (217) 356-2288; FAX:(217)356-5199.

XShell components include a module processor, class processor, class library (extension to the C++ class system), and runtime driver. XShell uses the same core components as OSF DCE, such as Kerboros authentification and X.500 name services. In addition, Expersoft will provide CORBA 2.0-conformant IDL stubs and implement the OMG C++ language binding. XShell 2.2 supports a variety of UNIX platforms and is priced at $9,600 per development seat. For more information contact Expersoft Corporation, 6620 Mesa Ridge Rd., Suite 100, San Diego, CA 92121, (619) 546-4100; FAX: (619)546-4110.