Helping developers create processing-based systems to best suit application, MicroBlaze(TM) Development Kit: Spartan(TM)-3E 1600E Edition delivers integrated platform with hardware, design tools, intellectual property, and reference designs. Kit supports 32-bit MicroBlaze soft processing design for Spartan-3E series of Platform FPGAs. Central XC3S1600E-4FG320C device provides platform logic, DSP coprocessing, and embedded system integration capabilities.

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Low-Cost Kit Includes Xilinx Award-Winning Platform Studio Integrated Design Environment, Spartan-3E Embedded Board and Flexible 32-Bit MicroBlaze Soft Processor

SAN JOSE, Calif., Oct. 30 /– Xilinx, Inc. (NASDAQ:XLNX) today released the MicroBlaze(TM) Development Kit: Spartan(TM)-3E 1600E Edition, a comprehensive design environment with everything embedded developers need to create processing-based systems. The Spartan-3E 1600E Edition delivers an integrated platform with hardware, design tools, intellectual property (IP) and reference designs to kick-start the development process. The fully integrated kit allows developers to rapidly customize their processor and IP to best suit their specific application and configure complete systems.

“Embedded processing customers continue to demand complete solutions to quickly start and complete their hardware and software development,” said Lawrence Getman, director of marketing for the Embedded Processing Division at Xilinx. “The fully integrated MicroBlaze embedded development kit enables both rapid hardware and software creation on an inexpensive, pre-verified Spartan-3E platform to accelerate the design of low-cost embedded solutions.”

Complete Development Kit

The MicroBlaze Development Kit: Spartan-3E 1600E Edition supports flexible 32-bit MicroBlaze soft processing design for the Xilinx Spartan-3E series of Platform FPGAs. MicroBlaze soft processing cores are instantiated in FPGA hardware, and combined with IP peripherals, FPUs and other co-processing engines to enable a fully customizable platform that meets the developer’s demanding and ever-changing embedded design requirements.

The kit includes:

– Spartan-3E SP3E1600E development board;

– Fully licensed versions of the award-winning Platform Studio embedded tool suite and ISE(TM) FPGA design software;

– Extensive peripheral support of processing IP cores;

– JTAG probe for code download, debug and FPGA programming;

– Serial and Ethernet cables, regional power supply, pre-configured FLASH device;

– Variety of pre-verified reference designs and full documentation; and

– Embedded operating system support

Central to the SP3E1600E board functionality is the Spartan-3E XC3S1600E-4FG320C device with platform logic, DSP co-processing and embedded system integration capabilities. The 1600E evaluation board provides a rich set of features and includes several options for peripherals, memory, displays, connectors, and interfaces that enable designers to easily and cost effectively prototype and evaluate their embedded system design.

Kit Accelerates Development

Xilinx Platform Studio’s intelligent design tools combine with a programmable FPGA platform in the MicroBlaze Development Kit to enable developers to craft embedded systems with the optimal combination of features, performance, area and cost. They can choose the most effective processing system for the target application, select IP, optimize performance, and validate software on the development board before their own custom hardware is available.

In addition, the pre-verified reference designs delivered with the development kit offer a broad set of options for rapidly configuring complete systems, allowing developers to get the basic design running quickly so they can focus more of their valuable time on optimizing the application. These include both hardware and software implementations to exercise the many features of the SP3E1600E platform, such as Ethernet, DDR memory, and various FLASH functions. Embedded OS (eOS) support is also included for Mentor Nucleus, Petalogix micron Clinux and Micrium micron C/OS-II.

Pricing and Availability

The MicroBlaze Development Kit: Spartan-3E 1600E Edition (Model #: DO-S3E1600E-DK-UNI-G, lead free RoHS compliant) is available now for purchase at $595 USD. The ISE FPGA and Platform Studio embedded tools shipped with the 1600E Edition kit support the following computing platforms: Windows(R) 2000 SP2, SP3, SP4, and XP SP1, SP2, Solaris(R) 2.8/5.8 and 2.9/5.9, as well as Linux(R) Red Hat(R) Enterprise 3 and 4. For more information on Xilinx embedded development kits, including the Spartan-3E 1600E, visit www.xilinx.com/embdevkits .

Lexra’s new Hardware/Software Development Board allows designers to prototype hardware and develop software for their SOC ASIC designs

A significant challenge to integrating third-party intellectual property cores, especially powerful embedded processors, is the lack of a prototyping vehicle that can be used to test the hardware design and develop software. Lexra, a leading developer of processor cores for embedded applications, has addressed this head on by introducing its new LX-PB20K Hardware/Software Development Board.

The board, co-developed by AMIRIX Systems Inc. and Lexra, provides a design team a board with a socket for a test chip and two Altera PLDs to contain the logic of the system design. “Not only can the design team run test vectors through the hardware, but software developers can execute their program code on hardware built from the same RTL as the final system,” says Jonah Probell, design engineer. “Thus, bugs in the logic and in the embedded software may be discovered much sooner in the design cycle.”

The board’s two PLD sockets have Altera’s 652 pin BGA pin-out to hold high-capacity APEX programmable logic devices (PLDs) from Altera Inc. Depending on gate capacity, one or more Lexra processor cores can run in the PLDs along with the designer’s custom logic. This allows the designer to configure the CPU core as well as debug his custom logic, early in the design cycle. In this configuration, the test chip socket will typically be unused.

If the designer wants to run his system at the full system speed, he can use an appropriately packaged ASIC test chip inserted in the board’s test chip socket. This device can contain one or more Lexra processors configured with custom engine interface, coprocessor interface, L-Bus (Lexra bus) devices and custom logic. This allows the system designer to run at high clock speeds of up to 250 MHz

The board also contains a standard 32-pin DIP EPROM and a 168-pin SDRAM DIMM. Standard I/Os are also available. They include a PCI connector, two RS-232 serial connectors, and programmable LEDs. The board has four clock signals. It includes two socketed clock oscillators, a PCI bus clock, and a BNC connector for an external clock source. The test chip may have an internally generated clock.

No prototyping board would be complete without a full complement of debugging support, and the LX-PB20K is no exception. Two EJTAG connectors on board allow on-chip debug and real-time trace capabilities using the MAJICplus probe and the EDB source level debugger, both from Lexra partner Embedded Performance Inc. (EPI). Alternatively, the board also supports on-chip debug using the MULTI source level debugger from Lexra partner Green Hills Software, with a Macraigor probe.

Several target resident debug kernels can be run on the Hardware/Software Development Board including RSS from EPI and PMON from Lexra. The board can also run industry-standard operating systems including VxWorks from Wind River Systems, Nucleus from Accelerated Technology, and Threadx from ExpressLogic, all three Lexra partners. In addition, Lexra has partnered with AMIRIX to provide embedded Linux for the LX-PB20K board.

The LX-PB20K sells for $7500 without PLDs and is available within 30 days of order. Lexra, Inc. is a microprocessor developer specializing in 32-bit RISC and DSP cores for the embedded market. In less than four years, Lexra has established itself as an innovator in embedded microprocessor technology and intellectual property (IP) licensing business model, with proven track record for customer success. During this short period, Lexra has delivered seven processors to 30 licensees in six different countries. Among the customers are top three network communication companies as well as top ten semiconductor companies.

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’.