RX Microcontroller Design Contest Demonstrates the Strength of Renesas Electronics' Ecosystem Partnerships to Offer More Than $110,800 in Cash and Prizes and More Than $965,000 in Total Giveaway
SANTA CLARA, Calif., and WESTON, Florida, November 8, 2010 -- Renesas Electronics America Inc. and Micrium announced today that Micrium is contributing a limited number of licenses for its full uC/Probe run-time data monitoring tool (valued at US$1,000 each) to the recently launched Renesas RX Design Contest. The contest features the new RX family of 32-bit microcontrollers (MCUs) and a robust software support environment provided by Renesas Electronics America and its Alliance Partner community. In addition to the uC/Probe licenses from Micrium, Renesas Electronics America will match each license giveaway with a copy of the book (retail value of US$155), µC/OS-III: The Real-Time Kernel, by Jean Labrosse (founder, CEO and president of Micrium), which contains more than 700 pages of valuable information on how to use a kernel, and also approximately 200 pages on how to perform hands-on exercises using the Renesas Electronics RX62N-based companion evaluation board (YRDKRX62N, www.renesas.com/RDKRX62N). Micrium also has ported its µC/TCP-IP to the RX family to run the µC/Probe, Micrium's award-winning run-time data monitoring tool (http://www.micrium.com/page/downloads/ports/renesas/rx_family).
Starting October 13, 2010, to March 4, 2011, there will be 1,000 RX62N Renesas Demonstration Kits (RDKs) available for contestants. The use of the RDK in the contest is encouraged but not required. The contest will be coordinated across the North American, European and Asian regions. For more information and to register for the competition, visit www.renesasrulz.com/rx-contest.
The design entries will be available on the Renesas RX Design Contest website for audience comments and voting. In addition to recognition for the overall "best" designs, the Renesas RX Design Contest will offer weekly challenges and prizes. Renesas Electronics America will award the top three winners of the contest: US$5,000 (first place); US$3,000 (second place); and US$1,000 (third place); and five honorable mentions receiving US$500 each. Selections will be based on a scoring of technical merit, design originality, usefulness, cost effectiveness, documentation and public voting. Final judging and winner selections will be announced during a special ceremony at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon Valley 2011.
Participating Alliance Partners also will present their own prize awards, based on criteria for their respective prizes. "Design contests frequently result in amazing applications," said Jean Labrosse, president and CEO of Micrium. "We expect this contest to yield exactly that. The Renesas Electronics RX MCUs and Micrium's middleware, instructive book and monitoring tool combine to provide quality, performance, and ease of use to contestants. Our companies have a strong commitment to the embedded marketplace, including education for students and engineers of all skill levels and backgrounds. We are proud to be a part of the effort."
The Renesas RX Design Contest provides an open, creative environment in which engineers of embedded systems can showcase their skills in any type of design using an RX MCU and software support provided by Renesas Electronics America and its Alliance Partner community, including CMX Systems, IAR Systems, Micrium, Micron Technology, SEGGER, Rowebots and TotalPhase.
"As a leading worldwide semiconductor supplier, Renesas Electronics understands how critical design influence and tools support are for the success of a new product, and Micrium has delivered particularly innovative tools supporting the RX MCU family," said Rob Dautel, Alliance and Communities Manager, Consumer & Industrial Business Unit, Renesas Electronics America. "Micrium's support of this contest with the donation of its uC/Probe licenses will add a higher level of competitiveness to the contest plus showcase the tool's capability to be used directly 'out of the box.'"
About uC/Probe
Micrium's award-winning uC/Probe is a Windows-based tool that enables engineers to easily "see" into their embedded design, while the design is running. No matter the design, or source code, uC/Probe displays values of virtually any variable, memory location, and I/O port in a target product. Variables are displayed as analog gauges, numeric indicators, thermometers, charts, spreadsheets, LEDs, or whatever best facilitates monitoring of the design. With uC/Probe, writing printf() statements and code, or including a user interface is a thing of the past.
About the RX62N RDK
The RX62N RDK integrates best-in-class products from several Renesas Electronics partners to create an extremely robust solution that helps reduce design and interoperability uncertainty for designers while delivering desired performance and time-to-market turnaround. Among the best-in-class components on the RDK board are devices from Analog Devices, Epson, Micron Technology, National Semiconductor, Okaya, SEGGER and TotalPhase.
About the RX Development Tools Environment
Since the introduction of the RX MCU family in 2009, Renesas Electronics has been steadily introducing new devices, features, tools and partnerships to expand the capabilities of the MCUs. Renesas Electronics supports its RX600 MCUs with a comprehensive proprietary hardware/software tool set and third-party support. Renesas Electronics offers the popular High-Performance Embedded Workshop (HEW) integrated development environment (IDE), which includes the RX-optimizing C/C++ compiler with integrated support for the low-cost E1 JTAG on-chip debugging tool, as well as the comprehensive E20 high-speed trace on-chip debugging tool. Third-party support for RTOS, middleware, communication protocol stacks, and color graphics is available from the global community of Renesas Electronics' partner vendors.
About Micrium
Micrium provides the highest quality embedded software components by way of the cleanest source code, and unsurpassed documentation and customer support. Micrium's uC/OS-II, uC/OS-III, and its complete line of software shorten time to market throughout all product development cycles. Micrium helps its customers build products that address today's increased design complexity. For additional information, please visit: www.micrium.com.
About Renesas Electronics America Inc.
Renesas Electronics America Inc., headquartered in Santa Clara, California, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), the world's number one supplier of microcontrollers and a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions, and a broad range of analog and power devices. In the Americas, Renesas Electronics America markets and sells industrial-type active-matrix LCD modules from NEC LCD Technologies, Ltd., a global leader in innovative display technologies. More information about the products offered by Renesas Electronics America can be found at www.renesas.com.
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