SimX Corp. of East Windsor has developed innovative software development platform.
By: David Pescatore
EAST WINDSOR From a dimly lit storefront office in Royal Plaza on Route 130, Vladimir Bernstein plans on revolutionizing the software development industry.
Dr. Bernstein, a resident of Pierce Road, is the president of the SimX Corp., creator of the TARGET software development platform. The platform, he said, can reduce the amount of time needed to develop complex systems 10 times or more, by eliminating the need for programmers.
"A major consulting firm asked us to prove how fast our system is," said Walt Stumberger, spokesman for SimX. "They gave us a project, but didn’t tell us how long they expected it to take. We called them back five days later and they thought we had questions, but we were finished. They expected the job to take four months."
Mr. Stumberger explained that when a company needs a computer system built, business analysts have to tell programmers what they want the system to do.
"That is the major cause of delay," he said. "First, business people and programmers speak different languages. It’s like when I work on a project with associates from Great Britain. We both speak English, but the usage is different.
"So, the programmer goes off and comes back 14 months into the 12 month project and the business people find out that what they asked for is not exactly what they need, so the project takes even longer."
Mr. Stumberger said that the TARGET system eliminates this problem by allowing the user, with minimal knowledge of computers, to tell the program what to do. The computer will know automatically how to do it.
"You could just tell the program to balance your checkbook, for example, and it would know to check this file for the latest statement and know which numbers to add and subtract from where," he said.
Mr. Stumberger said that with current systems, the user has to go in line by line and input numbers in appropriate areas, but not with TARGET.
"This is so efficient, it has to take off," he said.
The TARGET system is the result of 10 years of research and development led by Dr. Bernstein and his partner, Andrei Afanassenkov, from Brownstone Road.
Dr. Bernstein, 52, earned his degree in mechanical engineering from the Moscow Heat and Energy Technology Institute. He was awarded a gold medal in technical achievement (Russia’s top honor in that field) for redesigning systems within the nation’s power plants.
In 1991, his idea for TARGET drove him to the United States, where he could develop it. After two years of working odd jobs, Dr. Bernstein had enough money saved to found SimX in Princeton Junction. The company moved to Royal Plaza in 2000.
"I couldn’t work under the political system there," he said of his homeland. "I (improved the speed of) the Government Energy Commission’s system 100 times, but nobody noticed. They were out of touch with real life, and I wasn’t a communist buddy-buddy, so I was not appreciated. It is a very conservative system there. They just want you to do what the last guy did."
To explain his system, Dr. Bernstein uses Legos.
The process starts with a small, yellow square, called the converter.
The converter changes data from every commonly used language and program into one that can be understood by every component in the system. That data can then be pipelined from component to component (Lego to Lego) and freely used.
"Instead of writing millions of lines of code, TARGET is made up of components that can be plugged in and immediately start working with the rest of the system," Dr. Bernstein said.
Mr. Stumberger said that it is like building a house.
"Lines of code are like bricks," he said. "We have finished rooms. You just pick out what rooms you want and piece them together."
"It is like Henry Ford’s assembly line," Dr. Bernstein said. "You build systems with pre-built components."
Dr. Bernstein said that his system could save jobs in America and help to protect national security.
"Most of the Fortune 1000 companies, and the federal government, have systems developed overseas to save cost. Now, the work can be done here and at a savings of time and money," he said.
Mr. Stumberger said that overseas programmers may or may not have our best interests in mind.
"Imagine that you have a program written overseas and you get back 10 million lines of code. The program works fine and you understand maybe 8 million of those lines, but what do those other 2 million lines do? You don’t know, then you get a major blackout or something," Mr. Stumberger said.
"The worst virus I ever saw was 27 characters," he added. "You load that 10-million-line program and those 27 characters reformatted your hard drive."
Dr. Bernstein said that the TARGET system has been in test-use for almost three years and that SimX plans on offering it to consultants within a few months. Success at that level would lead to a mass on-the-shelf release of system components.
"Other companies have similar ideas for approaches in the air," he said, "but we have a powerful, working system and a 10-year head start."