
Next Generation Ada95 Solutions
Using Ada for commercial product development
The customer
JEOL USA, Inc. designs and manufactures scientific instruments.
Their product lines include analytical instruments (mass spectrometers,
nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometers), electron microscopes (scanning,
transmission), and semiconductor manufacturing equipment (electron beam
lithography systems, wafer defect inspection systems).
Their problem
The group developing the software to control the NMR spectrometer was
experiencing unacceptable increases in development costs. The DEC software
and hardware development environment did little to reverse declining
usability of the product. The code complexity was limiting the feature
set they could offer. Product reliability was undermined by persistent
bugs. Code size was growing dramatically.
The JEOL sales force was demanding next generation products for their customers:
- Easy to use windowed, graphical interface
- Interactive 2D and 3D graphics
- Multithreaded Processing
- Distributed operation for better productivity
- Faster, less expensive products
The decision
John Malcolmson, Manager of Software Development for the Analytical Instruments
Division, was instrumental in making the decision to switch to Silicon Graphics
workstations with built-in 3D graphics and Ada83. He researched the special
features of Ada (strong types and constraint checking, exception handling,
dynamic tasking, packages and information hiding, readable code). Malcolmson
felt these qualities would enhance the ability of his small team of developers
to focus on the complex problems they were solving.
He chose Silicon Graphics as his platform because of the quality of the 3D
interactive graphics, the commitment to Ada, the exceptional performance of
the hardware, the advanced operating systems, and, yes, the great demos (link to a demo).
The result
Malcolmson admits his judgement was questioned during the learning curve while
his programmers made the transition. Silicon Graphics supported him through the
process and the investment in Ada paid off. (insert video clip on productivity)
- His boss, Dr. Michael Frey, was impressed by the tremendous productivity
improvement of his team.
- The engineers were thrilled by their ability to develop error free code
and to catch bugs early in the development cycle. Ada easily handled the
complex requirements.
- Sales was delighted because Malcolmson's group delivered on the mission
critical requirements of their customers and new features produced few unexpected side effects.
- Service and Production were pleased because within JEOL the group had
exceptionally fast turnaround time (hours to days) for the few, minor bugs
that were found; fast turn around time for new features, and few customer complaints.
Malcolmson enthusiastically signed on as one of the first beta sites for
ProDev(tm) Ada95. After ten months of use, his team is even more committed
to Silicon Graphics' Ada95 solutions. "We've expanded the capabilities
of our product. We've increased the number of instruments. We've included
interactive collaboration, simultaneous multiple human languages, and found
we can make much better use of the distributed resources on the customer's
network. JEOL intends to expand the number of Ada products we develop."
Malcolmson's opinion of SGI support (insert video clip)
Malcolmson's opinion of WorkShop Ada (insert video clip)
JEOL USA, Inc.
11 dearborn Road
Peabody, MA 01960
Phone : 508-535-5900
Fax : 508-536-2205
Email : nmr@jeol.com
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