Read the latest news from the 2008 Embedded Systems Conference, Silicon Valley
The Embedded Systems Conference kicks off in San Jose, California today (Monday) and some of the early movers are Freescale with an LCD Coldfire microprocessor, Atmel with Linux OS support and Xilinx with an embedded development platform for 65nm Virtex-5 FPGAs.
Interest in LCDs with touch-screen interfaces is growing exponentially and so Freescale has introduced at ESC its first ColdFire microprocessor with an integrated touch-screen controller.
Freescale’s MCF5227x LCD processors combine on-chip color LCD and touch-screen controllers. They have an integrated CAN module and a USB host, device and On-the-Go (OTG) module.
Applications are likely to include building/home automation, HVAC and lighting control systems, fire/security control systems, medical and patient monitoring products and test equipment.
Atmel and TimeSys announced at ESC embedded Linux support for the ARM9-based AT91CAP9 customisable microcontroller.
The microcontroller-based system-on-chip has a metal programmable (MP) block which can be personalised with IP cores from Atmel’s library of product-tested functions, or from accredited third parties, or with cores developed by the CAP customer.
The aim, said the supplier, is to offer "a smaller form factor and lower power consumption at a unit price significantly lower than an MCU-plus-FPGA combination for the same functionality".
TimeSys is offering a free Board Support Package (BSP) for the CAP9 based on the 2.6.23 kernel. Additionally, the free BSP can be upgraded to a full LinuxLink subscription, providing a powerful suite of software, tools and support to accelerate the development of a custom Linux platform.
The BSP includes an FPGA for emulation of the CAP Metal Programmable Block for custom logic. This BSP includes Atmel’s Linux kernel and drivers, BusyBox utilities for basic commands and features, and a Linux host/cross toolchain capable of re-building the Linux kernel and the basic packages included in the BSP.
MIPS Technologies is showing customer technologies with Cavium Networks, Microchip Technology, PMC-Sierra and RMI Corporation.
Cavium Networks will show its OCTEON Multi-core MIPS64 processor family with 1 to 16 MIPS64 cores. While Microchip Technology will demonstrate its 32-bit PIC32 MCU family, based on the MIPS32 M4K core and featuring MIPS’ IP cores for Full Speed USB 2.0 On-the-Go (OTG) functionality.
Also at ESC, Xilinx is unveiling its embedded development environment of tools and ecosystem technologies for supporting system-on-chip designs targeting the company’s newest 65nm Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs.
Version 10.1 of the Embedded Development Kit (EDK) will be supported Avnet Electronics Marketing, Green Hills Software, LynuxWorks, Lauterbach, MontaVista, TimeSys and Wind River Systems.
"The introduction of Virtex-5 FXT FPGAs with dual PowerPC 440 blocks opens up tremendous new opportunities for developers building applications requiring both real-time and general operating systems," said Robert Day, vice president of Marketing at LynuxWorks.
The EDK 10.1 release also includes new and updated IP cores to optimize system design. Peripherals such as SPI, DDR2, DMA, PS2, Tri-Mode Ethernet MAC with SGMII support, and Flexray peripheral options, as well as PCI Express driver support for DMA are included. Improvements to the Multi-Port Memory Controller and the Memory Interface Generator (MIG) tools empower greater interfacing options for memory intensive applications.