Advanced development kit combines all the necessary components and tools to develop a full product based on STMicroelectronics’ latest ARM9-powered MCU.

IAR Systems has announced the IAR Advanced Development Kit for STR912, the first in a new product family of integrated suites for full product development. This first Advanced Development Kit (ADK) has been designed to offer all the necessary components for professional product development and debugging on the recently introduced STMicroelectronics STR912 microcontroller (MCU) family. The package allows a price point substantially lower than that of all the individual components, and enables a seamless migration to the new devices for developers already familiar with STR7 MCUs and with the intuitive IAR Embedded Workbench integrated development environment (IDE).

The IAR Advanced Development Kit for STR912 (ADK-STR912) comprises a BaseLine version of IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM, with 512Kbyte code generation capability and support for the STR9xxxxx family of MCUs; an IAR development board fitted with a STR912FW44x device; an IAR J-Trace embedded trace macrocell (ETM) trace debugger with 2Mbyte trace buffer; a trace cable and JTAG USB cable.

The availability of trace debugging through ETM offers the benefit of being able to trace bugs that are difficult to detect by other means, and thus speeds the development of the more complex applications that are enabled by the STR9.

Commented Mark Rootz, Marketing Manager for ARM9 Products at ST’s Microcontroller Division: ‘The STR910 series is the world’s first ARM9-based general-purpose Flash microcontroller, and is an important addition to our product range’.

‘We are delighted that IAR Systems has chosen the STR912 as the basis for its first Advanced Development Kit, and we are pleased to be working with them in making it available to our customers’.

The STR912 is an ARM9-based embedded controller that is ideal for a wide variety of applications such as point-of-sale terminals, industrial automation, security and surveillance, vending machines, communication gateways, serial protocol conversion, and medical equipment.

The ARM966E-S core can perform single-cycle DSP instructions, which makes it particularly suitable for speech processing, audio algorithms and low-end imaging.

The STR912 chip is also equipped with 16/32bit Flash with Ethernet, USB, CAN, AC motor control, four timers, ADC, RTC and DMA.

The advent of more complex 32bit ARM-powered devices at a reasonable cost is driving an increasing demand for a cost-effective full professional tool suite that can handle both development and debugging - JTAG and trace.

Until now, the cost of each tool component has been an inhibiting factor to the developer who needs access to efficient and advanced development methodologies.

The ADK-STR912 is priced at around Eur 4400 - only just over half the price of its nearest competitor.

The combination of tools in the ADK, combined with its attractive price point, offers developers exactly what they need for advanced development.

The DProbeST10 offers full development support for the four new advanced 16bit microcontrollers of the ST10 family.

With the DProbeST10 Hitex now offers full development support for the four new advanced 16bit microcontrollers of the ST10 family. Especially for industrial applications such as motor control, power convertors and positioning systems the new advanced 16bit microcontrollers offer a variety of interesting features. The new ST10F271, ST10F272, ST10F273 and ST10F276 provide a range of Flash memory densities from 128 to 832Kbyte, enabling developers to choose the optimum configuration for their application, and offering the possibility of reducing costs with a single-chip design where external Flash devices might previously have been required.

With the DProbeST10 the developer gains full access to all the internal activities of the microcontroller and thus can quickly eliminate the most demanding problems.

At every operating voltage and up to the maximum processor speed the in-circuit emulator supports all ST10-specific features, eg the MAC unit or the interruptible power-down mode.

Using the stand-alone operation mode the development can even be started when the target hardware should not yet be available.

The high-speed download is essential during the development of larger applications.

A full featured trace with timestamps not only simplifies debugging but also together with performance analysis functions assists in optimising the performance of any application.

For testing safety-critical applications the system can be extended by an optional hardware-based code coverage or a unit test software for regression testing.

New streaming Data Extractor software for use with CWAV’s award-winning USBee AX-Pro, provides a detailed view into many of today’s embedded communication buses.

New streaming Data Extractor software for use with CWAV’s award-winning USBee AX-Pro, provides a detailed view into many of today’s embedded communication buses. ‘Typically, the challenge faced by engineers is getting data out of an embedded system quickly so as to be able to process it, either to capture a bug in progress or to evaluate performance’, says Tim Harvey, Principal of CWAV. ‘We developed the Data Extractor to address this by supporting many of the most common embedded buses available today’.

‘No other product on the market combines this set of bus protocols and allows engineers, students and technicians to capture, find, and debug a sequence that happens hours or even days after the start of a test’.

An optional software product, it allows for the extraction of raw data from various embedded buses to store off to disk or stream to another application.

The Data Extractor is able to collect raw data from parallel, serial, SPI, I2C, I2S, high speed async, USB Full and Low speed, SMBus, 1-Wire and CAN buses.

Although there are other stand alone devices on the market, the Data Extractor is able to support all of the various buses, pull out transaction data on the fly, run indefinitely, capture entire test sequences, monitor embedded system data flows during normal operation, and process or store megabytes, gigabytes or terabytes of information.

The software runs as a stand alone executable or allows the user to write dedicated software to further process the extracted data using the Extractor API library.

Each Data Extractor is priced at US $495.

A Data Extractor bundle, which combines all ten Data Extractors, is priced at $1995.

The USBee AX Test Pod is an affordable PC-based pod that functions as a programmable oscilloscope, logic analyser and digital signal generator all in one small and easy to use unit.

Offered at three price points, the AX comes in Standard, Plus and Pro packages.

The AX-Standard comes with oscilloscope and logic analyser modules and is priced at $445.

The AX-Plus builds on the Standard’s strengths and adds a signal generator and USB, 12C, SPI and Async decoder modules; it is affordable at $745.

The AX-Pro contains all pieces included in the Plus package with the addition of a data logger, frequency counter, remote controller, PWM controller, frequency generator, pulse counter and USBee AX ToolBuilder source code library.

At only $49, the AVR Dragon is billed as the industry’s most comprehensive low-cost development tool.

Atmel Corp has released the AVR Dragon development tool for AVR microcontrollers. By providing a complete on-chip debugging and programming tool for more than 30 different AVR Flash microcontrollers at only $49, the AVR Dragon is the industry’s most comprehensive low-cost development tool. With the AVR Dragon, Atmel has set a new standard for low-cost development tools.

The AVR Dragon supports all programming modes for all AVR microcontrollers and on-chip debugging for AVR microcontrollers with up to 32Kbyte of Flash program memory.

At just a fraction of the price usually required for such a full-featured tool, the AVR Dragon will fulfil all programming and debugging needs.

The AVR Dragon can be used with an external target board as well as an onboard prototype area, allowing programming and debugging without any additional hardware.

By focusing on quality and having only one tool suite covering the entire AVR microcontroller family, engineers only need to deal with a few affordable tools to get a complete development environment.

‘Low cost, wide coverage and good quality has always been our motto for AVR development tools’, said Dag Arne Braend, Atmel’s AVR Development Tools Director.

‘The AVR Dragon is another example of a very low cost tool, yet robust enough to handle everyday life in a development environment; and it supports more than 30 different AVR microcontrollers’.

AVR Dragon is powered by the USB cable and can also source an external target with up to 300mA for programming or debugging.

If the target is already powered by an external power source, the AVR Dragon will adapt and level convert all signals between the target and the AVR Dragon.

The AVR Dragon uses the AVR Studio integrated development environment (IDE) available free of charge from Atmel.

AVR Studio includes a simulator, assembler, and C-compiler and is the software front-end for all Atmel AVR debugging and programming tools.

A flexible and secure firmware upgrade feature allows AVR Studio to easily upgrade the AVR Dragon to support new devices free of charge.

AVR Studio can be downloaded from the Atmel website.

Atmel’s AVR 8bit microcontrollers have a RISC core running single-cycle instructions and a well-defined I/O structure that limits the need for external components.

Internal oscillators, timers, UART, SPI, pull-up resistors, pulsewidth modulation, ADC, analogue comparator and watchdog timers are some of the features available in AVR devices.

AVR instructions are tuned to decrease the size of the program whether the code is written in C or Assembly.

With on-chip in-system programmable Flash and EEPROM, as well as on-chip debug on all devices, the AVR is a perfect choice in order to optimise cost and get product to the market quickly.

The ToolStick Starter Kit is a comprehensive evaluation and development platform for use with C8051F mixed-signal microcontrollers.

New from Silicon Laboratories, the ToolStick Starter Kit (ToolStickSK) is a comprehensive evaluation and development platform for use with the company’s C8051F mixed-signal microcontrollers (MCUs). Available in a portable USB stick format, the ToolStickSK provides an easy to use and feature rich tool for only $24.99. From mobile handsets to weigh scales, the ToolStickSK simplifies and speeds development of a wide range of applications that can benefit from Silicon Laboratories’ mixed-signal MCUs.

Small and portable, the ToolStickSK requires only a USB port on a PC and software that designers can download from the Silicon Laboratories website.

‘Tools are the most important factor in a designer’s decision on which MCU to use at the heart of their system’, said Derrell Coker, Vice President of Silicon Laboratories.

‘The ToolStick Starter Kit enables customers to plug directly into their laptops and begin development wherever and whenever it is convenient’.

‘Developers can easily experiment with new designs and execute on established designs in a risk free, low cost development environment’.

Inexpensive and easy to use, the ToolStickSK is another example of Silicon Laboratories’ commitment to provide the most comprehensive development platforms.

The ToolStickSK includes a base adapter that uses a C8051F326 USB MCU to communicate with an interchangeable daughter board.

Three example programs are included to demonstrate Silicon Laboratories’ user-friendly development environment and mixed-signal MCU.

Designers can view and change the contents of internal registers and memory, as well as set breakpoints in the code or perform single stepping through disassembled code.

To meet customer demands, the new ToolStick Terminal PC application provides access to UART and GPIO functions on the MCU.

In addition, customers can purchase other daughter boards demonstrating different Silicon Laboratories MCUs, depending on the functionality necessary for the end product.

To shorten the overall product development cycle, the ToolStickSK simulates field implementations by plugging into a USB port and determining how a product’s code will affect the behaviour of the target MCU.

The designer can also connect the end product with the ToolStickSK, providing an immediate demonstration of how the product will behave in the field.

The PICkit 2 Debug Express development programmer now supports in-circuit debugging of selected PIC microcontrollers.

Acal Semiconductors has the new PICkit 2 Debug Express from Microchip. This popular development programmer now supports in-circuit debugging of selected PIC microcontrollers. This enables engineers to begin development with PIC microcontrollers for a very low initial investment.

The new PICkit 2 Debug Express Kit features a 44-pin demo board with a PIC16F917 microcontroller.

The PICkit 2 connects to any personal computer via USB, and its in-circuit debugging features include halt, single step and setting a breakpoint.

One of the barriers to entering the world of microcontroller development can be the cost and complexity of development tools.

The simple-to-use PICkit 2 Debug Express is priced at only GBP 29.99 for the complete kit.

There are 12 easy-to-understand tutorials with source code included that allow users to learn at their own pace.

The CDs provided also include Microchip’s free MPLAB IDE integrated development environment and a host of other software - enabling new users to easily get started with an embedded control design.

Customers who already own the PICkit 2 programmer only need to download the Debug Express firmware from Microchip’s website to support the new debugging functionality.

Existing PICkit 2 users can also purchase the new 44-pin demo board separately or use the new debugging capability on existing demonstration boards, such as the PICDEM Mechatronics board.

The PICkit 2 Debug Express Kit (DV164121) is available from ACAL Semiconductors now and includes Microchip’s 44-pin PIC16F917 Flash microcontroller demo board, the PICkit 2 programmer, USB cable and software CDs.

The 44-pin demo board is available separately for GBP 12.99.

The PICkit 2 Debug Express debugging capabilities currently support selected PIC microcontrollers, with additional device support coming soon via firmware upgrades.

Kit offers programmable logic controller developers the ability to incorporate reliable low-cost Rabbit hardware in lieu of more expensive PLC systems.

Rabbit Semiconductor has released an Embedded PLC Application Kit, offering PLC (programmable logic controller) developers the ability to incorporate reliable low-cost Rabbit hardware in lieu of more expensive PLC systems. Traditional PLC programmers will enjoy programming their new Rabbit-based solutions, using the supplied ISaGRAF programming software, recently upgraded to support Rabbit products. This industrial programming software package supports all of the familiar industrial programming environments listed in the IEC61131-3 standard and is currently in use by thousands of PLC programmers worldwide.

The Rabbit Embedded PLC Application kit includes ISaGRAF software and the Rabbit BL2500 single board computer, as well as sample application programs.

The ISaGRAF v3.5 workbench is an industrial Soft Logic programming system, supporting six different programming languages.

Industrial users of PLCs will be able to use their language of choice and deploy lower-cost Rabbit-based solutions as easily as they implement their traditional PLC systems.

ISaGRAF is fully compliant with the programming languages specified in the IEC61131-3 standard, recognised worldwide as the standard for PLC systems.

These languages include Sequential Function Chart (SFC), Function Block Diagram (FBD), Ladder Diagram (LD), Instruction List (IL), and Structured Text (ST).

The Rabbit BL2500 provides system engineers with an exceptional, low-cost platform, equally suited for single unit installations, as well as high-volume applications.

Based on the Rabbit 3000 microprocessor, the BL2500 incorporates a powerful feature set of flash memory, digital I/O, analogue I/O, multiple serial ports and 10/100 Ethernet.

All of these features are encompassed on a compact board size of 100 x 100mm and easily mountable on a standard 100mm DIN rail tray.

The Embedded PLC Application Kit includes all of the hardware and software required to develop a Rabbit-based PLC replacement system.

Evaluation and development platform is designed for Synopsys’ DesignWare PCI Express IP.

Synopsys and First Silicon Solutions (FS2), a division of MIPS Technologies, have announced the availability of the Sitka evaluation and development platform for Synopsys’ DesignWare PCI Express (PCIe) IP. The Sitka board, the result of collaboration between the two companies, functions as a standard PCIe addon card with support for up to eight PCIe lanes (each lane is a 2.5Gbit/s communication channel). With this new platform, designers can test and debug their system-on-chip (SoC) designs using the DesignWare PCIe IP while performing interoperability testing between their SoC design and a PCIe PHY.

Designers using the Sitka board to prototype SoCs can reduce their design risk, cut development time and enable predictable success in their complex SoCs.

With the Sitka board, designers can prototype large designs by synthesising their SoC into two large onboard Xilinx Virtex-4 FPGAs.

These two FPGAs are interconnected through 272 I/O pins and can be configured for operating at up to 1Gbit/s point-to-point interconnect, providing high throughput data transfers or sets of unidirectional channels.

The FPGAs are configured via the onboard ROM.

The ROM can hold multiple FPGA configurations allowing the designer to test design variations and switch between different PHYs and the Xilinx Rocket I/O.

‘Partnering with Synopsys, the market leader in PCI Express IP, we are providing designers a high-performance board that can be used to evaluate large, complex PCI Express-based designs’, said Rick Leatherman, Vice President and General Manager of FS2.

‘Coupling our expertise in hardware verification and debug technology with Synopsys’ expertise in PCI Express, we were able to create a solution that allows designers to fully develop, test and debug their SoC designs with PCI Express before committing to silicon’.

Synopsys has used the Sitka board for compliance testing of the combined DesignWare PCI Express digital cores and DesignWare PCI Express PHY at the PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG) Compliance Workshops.

For design development and prototyping, the Sitka board provides multiple options for the PHY interface.

For initial prototyping, designers can use the built-in Xilinx Rocket I/O serdes connected directly to the Sitka PCIe interface.

For more extensive PCIe and PHY compatibility testing with their designs, designers can use a PCIe PIPE-compliant PHY and connect through the standard PIPE-C-compliant expansion connector.

For DesignWare PCIe digital IP evaluations, Synopsys provides an FPGA configuration that allows the Sitka board to be used as a PCI Express-based 10/100 Ethernet adapter.

‘Our customers have been asking us for a hardware development environment that provides high-performance hardware and the capacity to handle large designs with our proven DesignWare PCI Express IP’, said Guri Stark, Vice President of Marketing for the Solutions Group at Synopsys.

‘By working closely with FS2, we’ve created a board that is unmatched in the industry today and enables designers to get to market faster while reducing their risks and lowering costs’.

The Toshiba MeP Development Kit has been chosen as the design platform and environment for a nationwide digital media SoC design challenge.

Celoxica’s Toshiba MeP (Media Embedded Processor) Development Kit has been chosen as the design platform and environment for a nationwide digital media SoC design challenge. This announcement is the dividend of years of collaboration and investment made by Celoxica, Toshiba and the Japanese VLSI Design and Education Centre (VDEC) into semiconductor solutions and system level design for very complex system-on-chip (SoC) design. Selected by the VLSI Design and Education Centre (VDEC), the central hub of Japanese university expertise for VLSI technology, research, teaching and development, Celoxica’s technology was chosen as the most fit-for-purpose and usable solution.

It will be used by teams of specialist SoC developers to create award winning designs around Toshiba’s MeP architecture.

Due to the levels of complexity and performance involved with such designs, the robust SoC prototyping and validation features of Celoxica’s technology were cited as key factors in VDEC’s decision.

Celoxica’s Toshiba MeP Development Kit provides a comprehensive package of ESL design tools, programmable hardware platforms and utilities to help designers develop high performance SoC designs.

As well as offering MeP processor IP, the kit is fully integrated into Toshiba’s MeP design flow to enable the rapid creation and validation of complex designs from algorithmic models.

Supplied with the Kit is Celoxica’s award winning DK Design Suite of system design tools, video IP and application programming interfaces (APIs).

‘VDEC has been pleased with the use of Celoxica design tools and boards for many years’, said Dr Kunihiro Asada, Director of VDEC.

‘We now need to embrace and meet the challenges of ever more complex semiconductor design and need a configurable platform solution to do this’.

‘Our selection of solutions from Celoxica and Toshiba will help meet the needs of future SoC design education’.

Toshiba’s configurable processor MeP core has already been deployed into mass volume products such as DVD players, intelligent vehicles and other very high performance image processing systems.

Its inherent configurability reduces turn around and delivers architectures optimised to the application or customer specification.

Toshiba will sponsor a prise for the winning design and it is anticipated that the design will be taken through to silicon fabrication.

‘It is an honour to be selected as the technology platform provider for such a prestigious and demanding design challenge’, said Dr Stephen Chappell, General Manager and Representative Director of Celoxica Japan.

‘This decision reflects not only on the investment we have made into our technology, but also the relationships with corporations and organisations at the forefront of advanced electronics design’.

After completion of the design challenge VDEC expects to roll out the platform solution to over 150 Japanese universities and 640 research groups who are part of the VDEC network.

Application kit interfaces a RabbitCore module with MaxStream XBee wireless ZigBee modules.

Available now from Rabbit Semiconductor, the company’s ZigBee/802.15.4 application kit interfaces a RabbitCore module with MaxStream XBee wireless ZigBee modules. Adding ZigBee technology to an Ethernet enabled Rabbit embedded control device offers a low-cost, robust wireless infrastructure that allows users to monitor remote devices within a sophisticated wireless network, exchange data between devices, and control I/O from a secured PC on the Internet. As the latest emerging wireless standard, ZigBee is positioned for widespread integration in embedded applications.

ZigBee, known for its reliable, low-cost, low-power features, builds on the established IEEE802.15.4 standard.

Rabbit’s ZigBee/802.15.4 Application Kit is a reference application that comes complete with the hardware and software for implementing a ZigBee wireless control network in the various topologies such as point-to-point and point-to-multipoint.

The simple to use configuration software allows users to set up a network, discover nodes, and establish communications between similar ZigBee devices.

The RabbitCore module acts as the network co-ordinator to monitor and manage two other battery-powered XBee-equipped node devices.

This allows users to access and control a ZigBee/802.15.4 network from anywhere in the world.

The RabbitCore module is equipped with Ethernet and 512Kbyte Flash, 256Kbyte SRAM, 1Mbyte serial Flash and 33 GPIO lines, and has the ability to act as both an intelligent control device or as an Ethernet gateway.