Several software tools-the USNET TCP/IP protocol, the SuperTask! RTOS , and the TronTask! RTOS -are available in versions that support Motorola's MBX860 board. The board, which is designed for communications and networking OEMs, supports MPC860 processors operating at up to 40MHz, as well as 128MB of EDO DRAM or standard Fast Page DRAM in 168-pin DIMM sockets. Supertask! and TronTask! for MBX860 are available now. A royalty-free license (source code included) costs $8,000. USNET for MBX860 is also available. Pricing begins at $7500.

US Software
Hillsboro, OR
(800) 356-7097
www.ussw.com

CodeWarrior Integrated Development Environment 2.0 for 68K/ColdFire is the latest release of a set of development tools whose enhancements include support for Motorola's ColdFire processors, as well as an updated compiler and debugger. The processors and development tools, are targeted for consumer electronics, office automation, robotics, and motor control systems. RTOSes supported by this development environment include the Nucleus PLUS Kernel, EUROS from Dr. Kaneff Engineering Consultants, and Motorola's PPSM (v. 3.02). Also being released is CodeWarrior for the Motorola PowerPC v. 5.0. You can purchase CodeWarrior v. 2.0 for 68K/ColdFire now for $2,500. CodeWarrior for Power PC v. 5.0 is available for the same price.

Metrowerks
Austin, TX
(800) 377-5416
www.metrowerks.com

A version of the 8051 Virtual Workshop is available that supports debugging and verification for multiple processor systems, without hardware. Its automatic address recognition allows serial communication between microcontrollers with "a minimum" of processor intervention. By running multiple instances of Virtual Workshop, either on a single PC or several PCs on a network, you can simulate multiple target systems, making the presence of actual target hardware less critical, although the Virtual Workshop is capable of communicating with a real system.

Crossware Products
Herts, UK
44 (0) 176-385-3500
www.crossware.com

Hypersignal RIDE is DSP design software made to support Texas Instruments' DSK6211 and DSK6711 DSP hardware. It can be used in a number of DSP applications, such as instrumentation, systems modeling and simulation, image processing, and other numeric-intensive applications. Block components are selected from a pull-down menu or toolbar and connected together with a mouse to establish a data flow. Run-time parameters are adjusted from pop-up dialog boxes, and the algorithm is executed on the target DSK by pressing a button. The software is also capable of symbolic debugging, code profiling, and application export. RIDE software is available now in several editions costing between $3,995 and $9,995.

Hyperception
Dallas, TX
(214) 343-8525
www.hyperception.com

The MULTI 2000 integrated development environment and family of C, C++, and EC++ compilers are now available for the TriCore Unified processor from Infineon Technologies. MULTI 2000 integrates source-level debugging, program building, profiling, and version control for the development of software for the TriCore architecture, which features a 16-/32-bit instruction set. Multi 2000, including a C/C++ compiler costs $5,900. A Unix version costs $8,900.

Green Hills Software
Santa Barbara, CA
(805) 965-6044
www.ghs.com

MicroC/OS-II is an industrial open- source RTOS for digital avionics that offers semaphores, message mailboxes, message queues, event flags, interrupts, and time delays, among other features. A certification package includes source code, build files and requirements, design, and test and integration documentation to meet the requirements of avionics manufacturers seeking to obtain FAA RTCA/EUROCAE DO-178B certification. The software and certification documentation are available now, starting at under $30,000.

OnCore Systems
Half Moon Bay, CA
(650) 712-0655
www.oncoresystems.com

Features of the latest release of the TAU UML Suite v. 4.3 include support for UML v. 1.3 graphical notation, XML/XMI, Java2, and Enterprise Java beans. It's part of the Tau development environment, which comprises tools for the analysis, design, and testing of event-driven, real-time applications in a package that merges the graphical notation of UML, the real-time design and development language SDL, and the ISO standard test scripting language TTCN. The Tau development environment is available now.

Telelogic AB
Malmę, Sweden
(609) 520-1935
www.telelogic.com

Hardware

The evaluation kit for the SX-Stack TCP/IP protocol stack contains a demonstration board, an AC power supply, a nine-pin-to-nine-pin serial cable, a CD-ROM containing source code and other information, and a user's guide. The SX-Stack is a configurable combination of standard Internet protocols implemented as Virtual Peripheral modules. The evaluation kit costs $99. It's available now.

Scenix
Mountain View, CA
(650) 210-1500
www.scenix.com

The PXC76x emulates Philips' 8051 LPC76x controllers, whose family consists of three members with up to 4K OTP ROM: the 87LPC762, 87LPC764, and 87LPC76. An emulation system is offered in conjunction with the PXC76 pod, which includes dual-ported emulation memory, hardware breakpoints, an operating voltage range from 2.7 V to 5.5 V, and support for on-chip peripherals. The pod itself costs $1,245 but would only be useful by itself to designers who already had the full emulation system, which costs from $4,000 to $6,000. Both pod and system are available now.

Hitex Development Tools
Sunnyvale, CA
(800) 454-4839
www.hitex.com

The Rabbit 2000 Core Module , which provides an interface for the Rabbit 2000 microprocessor, includes the following components in a design which measures 1.9-in. by 2.3-in.: 40 general purpose I/Os, SRAM and flash, memory I/O interface, master-slave control pins, five 8-bit timers, two 10-bit timers, and four CMOS compatible serial ports. It's available now as part of a development kit for $169, and by itself starting at $39.

Rabbit Semiconductor
Davis, CA
(530) 757-8400
www.rabbitsemiconductor.com

Graphics Toolkit , a hardware/software package for developing GUIs, provides tools for repetitive tasks. It supports bitmap and vector graphics with Cartesian and polar coordinate systems. Graphics can be used for both static LCD graphics displays and real-time graphics animations for oscilloscopes, animated bar and pie graphs, low-resolution video sequences, animated street maps, on-screen instruments, and representations of active processes. It also features tools for the integration of input peripherals such as keyboards, pointer instruments, rotary position transducers, and touch screens. Device drivers are included to control these peripherals. It's available now for $595.

Wilke Technology
Aachen, Germany
4 (924) 191-8900
www.wilke.de

The PowerTAP emulator for Motorola's MPC7400 was designed for developers in telecommunications, Internet client/server, and high bandwidth graphics and video industries. It features a cache display window, MMU support for memory translation and paging, flash programming, and master/slave support for multiprocessor system debugging. The debugging feature provides bit-level detail of the registers. PowerTAP is available now, starting at $4,990.

Applied Microsystems
Redmond, WA
(800) 426-3925
www.amc.com

Chips

The EZ4021 MiniRISC is a 64-bit MIPS microprocessor core that operates at 250MHz and is targeted for communications applications such as set-top boxes, image processing engines, and networking switches and routers. It was introduced with the TinyRISC, a 32-bit microprocessor. The EZ4021 measures 12mm2 and includes 16K instruction and 16K data caches. Power consumption is 2.6mW/MHz. The TinyRISC measures 2mm2 and it operates at a speed of 120MHz. Evaluation/development kits will be available in the third quarter.

LSI Logic
Milpitas, CA
(408) 433-8000
www.lsilogic.com

Xtensa III is the the third generation of chips featuring the Xtensa processor technology. The chips come with several options for configuration, including a DSP coprocessor called the Vectra, whose worst-case performance is listed at 200MHZ. The Vectra coprocessor can be configured to 8-, 16-, and 24-bit fixed-point applications. Another option is a 32-bit floating-point coprocessor designed with printing, graphics, and audio applications in mind. Major features of this coprocessor include 16 dedicated floating point registers, as well as a set of load/stores, offset, and indexed address update modes, among others. Licensing fees for an individually configured processor and software tool environment start at $350,000. The Vectra DSP option bumps the price up to $500,000. It's available now.

Tensilica Inc.
Santa Clara, CA
(408) 986-8000
www.tensilica.com

The TMS320C5510 DSP device is the first in a family of programmable DSPs featuring the TMS320C55x DSP core. The C5510 DSP will be available at a clock rate of 160MHz, or 320 MIPS, with power consumption of 80mW. It uses a dual-MAC architecture featuring a 32-bit program bus, three 16-bit data read buses, two 16-bit data write buses, and five 24-bit address buses. It also offers 160K words of on-chip SRAM. Samples of the C5510 DSP in 15 x 15 mm microStar BGA packages are available now, with production quantities, as well as a 200MHz version, scheduled for the fourth quarter.

Texas Instruments
Dallas TX
(800) 477-8924
www.ti.com

The 32-pin FT8U232AM is a single chip designed for transferring serial data over the Universal Serial Bus. It can be used to upgrade old RS-232 designs. Data transfer rates are listed at up to 2MBps. The chip's architecture accomodates use in a variety of applications such as USB modems, USB interface cables, RS-422 data links, and instrumentation. It is sampling now and will be available in the third quarter in production quantities. It costs $3 each in quantities of 1,000.

Future Technology Devices
Victor, NY
(716) 425-3753
www.ftdi.com

The ST9 and ST7 lines of 8-bit microcontrollers have been expanded to include two families, designated ST92163 and ST7263, respectively, that carry an integrated Universal Serial Bus interface. In addition to complying with the USB 1.1 specification, the interface includes a 5V/3.3V software-controlled voltage regulator, USB transceivers, and a serial interface engine with a built-in direct memory access (DMA) controller. The ST92163 units are based on the ST9 8-/16-bit core running at 24MHz. Its USB interface has up to eight functions and 16-bidirectional endpoints, programmable buffer size, and transfer direction. The ST7263 family of MCUs is based on the ST7 core, and offers a USB interface with three bi-directional endpoints. The ST7263 family is available now starting at $3 each in quantities of 10,000. It comes in ROM and OTP versions, in SO34 and SDIP32 packages, as well as in die form. Units in the ST92163 family start at $6 each in quantities of 10,000. They come in ROM and OTP versions, in TQFP64 and SDIP56 packages, and also in die form.

STMicroelectronics
Lexington, MA
(781) 861-2650
www.st.com

The ADCDS-1403 is a single package, 14-bit signal processor that combines correlated double sampling with a sampling A/D converter. It also features a user-configurable input amplifier, programmable analog input bandwidth, gain and offset adjustments, out-of-range indicator, internal timing circuits, and a precision reference circuit. The ADCDS-1403 requires two externally generated timing signals to digitize the CCD's analog output signal: a Reference Hold-to capture the CCD reference signal-and a Start Convert command. It's housed in a 40-pin TDIP. It's available now, for $192 each in quantities of 100.

Datel, Inc.
Mansfield, MA
(508) 339-3000
www.datel.com