35 years of developer-oriented tools and solutions for embedded development
In April 2021, we celebrate our 35th anniversary.
We look back on an innovation-driven history in an industry characterized by rapid technical progress in electronics. Our most important goal has always been to support you: the embedded software developers for automotive, medical, avionics, industrial and consumer applications.
It all started in 1986...
... when Helmut Kindermann founded “iSYSTEM Gesellschaft für Informatiksysteme mbH”. Originally, iSYSTEM was a distributor for hardware and software for embedded software developers, offering amongst other cross-compilers and emulators for Intel’s 8051 microcontroller or simulators for Zilog’s 8-bit Z80. But soon we started to develop our own tools, like the iC-80 In-Circuit Emulator for Z80 microprocessors and the iPS4000 EPROM Simulator. In 1991, we introduced our first software product, the iSIM-Simulator for Motorola’s 6805 devices.
Fulfilling the needs of embedded developers
Since the early days, we have learned a lot about the demanding needs of embedded developers and accordingly expanded our product portfolio. A huge milestone was our first integrated development environment dosIDEA in 1992. Many of its basic concepts for debugging and performing trace with emulators can still be found in our successful IDE, debug, and trace tool winIDEA.
Over the years and thanks to close partnerships with leading semiconductor companies, iSYSTEM tools supported an increasing number of microcontroller/processor devices and were further enhanced with additional software and hardware tools and services. Like testIDEA, a software tool to perform unit, integration and system tests, the free and public Application Programming Interface (API) isystem.connect with lots of Software Development Kits (SDK) on top of it, and the BlueBox debug and trace hardware tools – just to name our most successful products.
Committed international team
Until today, iSYSTEM is a privately owned company. Our international team of more than 80 employees in five offices in Europe and the US as well as distributors in Asia maintain close partnerships with the major semiconductor manufacturers.
“iSYSTEM has always been oriented towards the needs of embedded software developers. We are fully committed to the requirements of our customers and, in cooperation with our semiconductor partners, we always keep an eye on future developments in the hardware sector as well,” said Erol Simsek, CEO of iSYSTEM. “We are proud to be a part of the success story of many of our customers’ applications especially in the automotive and industrial sector. And we will continue to support them with user-friendly and practice-oriented software and hardware tools.”
Due to the pandemic, we will not be having an official celebration for their 35th anniversary. “We are missing the face-to-face meetings and fruitful discussions with our customers and partner companies “, Erol Simsek mentioned. “And as soon as things return to normal, we will celebrate with our employees, families and partners – we all deserve it!”
Get the whole story
Follow the history timeline to get the complete insight of our path from tool distributor to one of the world's leading tool providers.
This blog post is adapted from the official press release. The press release is available in English and German language.