Conformiq today announced the availability of the latest version of Conformiq Qtronic, now utilizing the power of multi-core, distributed and parallel computing for faster automatic test case generation. This scalability breakthrough paves the way for deploying Conformiq’s automated test design technology in grids and on cloud computing platforms. By distributing the computations on multi-cores or across clustered computer systems, Conformiq Qtronic customers can speed their test case generation process and reduce costs.

Conformiq’s flagship product, Conformiq Qtronic, automates the design of tests for software and systems by generating black-box functional tests from high-level models without user intervention. These models can be created in a fraction of the time compared to writing the corresponding test cases by hand. Conformiq has helped its customers increase their test generation speed by as much as 20 times, and helped them achieve higher test quality and better test coverage. The mean of customer benchmarks shows test generation speed increases more than 5 times at the beginning of a Conformiq Qtronic deployment.

The new Conformiq Qtronic efficiently balances test generation computations on all the available cores of a multi-core computer or across networked computers. With a dual-core approach, for example, test case generation speed can be increased at least 40 percent compared to the previous version of Conformiq Qtronic. With a dual-core system, test generation speed doubles; with a quad-core system, test generation speed quadruples; and with a 16-core system, test generation speed increases tenfold.

“Based on market feedback, Conformiq is clearly the current technology leader in the automated test design space. The distributed test generation solution provides concrete benefits to our customers and solidifies our leadership position,” said Antti Huima, CTO of Conformiq. “This new technology can be easily deployed on HPC clusters inside our customer enterprises, but it also paves the way for dynamic installations on cloud platforms such as the Amazon EC2.”

“Our main objective is testing administrative systems. In our experience, the Conformiq automated test design tool is a robust tool that can be deployed in all types of scenarios. It is very flexible and versatile, and I like it's distributed and parallel computation capabilities,” said Klaas Smit, a testing thought leader at Atos Origin, The Netherlands. “We are looking forward to using this new version of Conformiq Qtronic.”

“The desire to reduce software development and testing costs reaches across all levels of the market, from code writing to testing to quality assurance,” said Chris Rommel, analyst, Embedded Software and Tools Practice, VDC Research. “Automated test design may help organizations speed future test development efforts by facilitating the interpretation and reuse of test scripts created by other engineers for previous projects.”