Embedded Systems

Car dashboards with touch control may be just around the corner as silicon supplier Atmel introduces its first standard product capacitive touch controller that is fully qualified for the automotive market. Areas where touch control is expected to be used in vehicles includes controls for windows and rear-view mirrors. “As the automotive industry demands more touch-enabled interfaces for their systems, ...

STMicroelectronics has introduced a 32-bit microcontroller in its STM32 range which will make the Cortex-M3 based devices more cost competitive with the Cortex-M0 based entry-level MCUs. Dubbed the Value Line, the 24MHz ARM Cortex-M3 processor based MCUs will have a price tag of less than $1. “Our Value line with Cortex-M3 is our response to Cortex-M0,” ST spokesman Alexander Czajor ...

Atego, the supplier of development tools for complex, mission and safety-critical embedded systems, has acquired a C++ tool specialist based in Germany called Blue River Software. Atego, is the design software company which resulted from the recent merger of UK-based Artisan Software Tools and Aonix from California. According to James Gambrell, executive chairman of Atego, the acquisition of Blue River ...

EVOC has launched an Intel Atom processor-based single board computer which has six Gbit LAN ports. NET-1815VD6N provides 6 x onboard Gigabit LAN port, 3 x SATA interface, 1 x DOM interface and 1 x CF card slot. The D510 is a dual core Atom processor with four threads, EM64T support and runs at 1.66GHz; FSB: 667MHz; L1 cache: 2×24KB+2×32KB; ...

Toshiba Electronics Europe claims to be showing the first ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller which works from a single 5V supply at Embedded World this week. The TMPM380FY is the first in a series of 5V Cortex-M3 devices aimed at embedded designs for industrial and white goods applications. On-chip peripherals will interface directly with motor drives and control IGBTs. There is 256kbyte of ...

Fujitsu Microelectronics has added to its Europe-based embedded design support capabilities as it steps up its attack on the local automotive and smart-metering markets. Last year, Fujitsu announced an expansion of its European software capabilities with the acquisition of Comneon’s software development centre in Linz, Austria. The centre gave the company an embedded software activity supporting the automotive sector. This ...

Renesas Technology’s latest SH7216 flash microcontrollers are aimed squarely at industrial applications such as AC servos, building automation and general purpose networking. These are 200MHz 32-bit MCUs and to support these applications the 72 devices in the range include options for FPU (floating point processing unit) and Ethernet functions as well as various memory and package options. Based on the ...

Embedded World 2010 will see Xilinx working with Inova Semiconductors on a configurable interface IP core for in-car systems. The Automotive Pixel Link (APIX) IP will be offered with the FPGA firm’s Automotive (XA) family of Spartan-6 devices. The configurable core supports multiple high-bandwidth video and communications links. It will be used to transfer real-time video from two or more ...

Based on AT90SO secureAVR microcontrollers, the VaultIC200 offers multiple interfaces and bundled security firmware

Guest columnist Joachim Hüpper from Renesas Technology Europe describes the features of the firm’s RX series of microcontrollers. The RX microcontroller (MCU) family uses a 32-bit enhanced Harvard CISC architecture to achieve very high code density, as well as performance of 1.65 MIPS/MHz. RX is manufactured in Renesas’ reliable, time-proven and fast 90nm embedded Flash process, which enables zero-wait execution at up to ...