Dusseldorf, June 4, 2014 — Renesas Electronics Europe, a leading supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today officially announced that IAR Systems® industry-leading toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM® has full support for the RZ/A1 “Renesas Starter Kit” (RSK) development suite.
A key differentiator of the RZ/A1 MPU is the abundance of up to 10MB of embedded SRAM. This is sufficient to remove the need for external RAM. Numerous customer benefits stem from this: hardware costs are reduced by moving from a 3-chip solution (CPU, Flash, RAM) to a 2-chip solution (CPU, Flash); software performance is increased because the RAM is connected directly to the internal bus, so there is no external interface delay; and designs can be simpler, more compact, and therefore get faster to market.
Time-to-market can also be significantly improved by selecting the right tool chain and software partners. Renesas is proud to announce that its RZ/A1 series of MPUs is fully supported by IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM, and an evaluation version of IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM can be downloaded at www.iar.com/ewarm.
Tim Burgess, head of marketing in Renesas Electronics Europe said: “We are proud of our longstanding relationship with IAR Systems; the inclusion of the support for the RZ Starter Kit adds another string to the already impressive show of support from this long-term partner. In an environment where tools can be the decisive factor between a successful or failing development, Renesas is very glad to have IAR Systems’ support. The IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM IDE provides a clear competitive advantage for Renesas and enabled the RZ/A1 to reach an outstanding EEMBC CoreMark benchmark score of 4.15.”
“In our continuous effort to provide Renesas customers with the best-in-class C/C++ development tools, debugger and analysis tools, while being the only tools vendor for the entire Renesas MCU/MPU architectures, we are extremely pleased to announce that IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM is now fully supported by the Renesas RSK starter kit,” said Stefan Skarin President and CEO of IAR Systems. “Customers have the choice to evaluate the high-performance RZ/1A devices with sample applications, as well as peripheral device initialization code including the LCD display using the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM IDE. IAR Systems brings outstanding performance in execution time, code size footprint, power debugging with an efficient and easy to use runtime analysis integrated in the development environment. In addition, customers will have the ability to perform kernel awareness debugging with ThreadX and GUIX and Micrium µC/OS-III®.”
The RZ/A1 series of embedded microprocessors is a Cortex®-A9 based microprocessor, optimized for the Human Machine Interface (HMI) market. It supports up to WXGA (1280 x 800) displays, is able to drive two screens concurrently, and includes up to two camera inputs. RZ/A1 series MPUs also include all the connectivity for a standard application: for instance, 10/100 Ethernet, two channels of USB 2.0, and up to five channels of CAN.
Remarks ARM and Cortex are registered trademarks or trademarks of ARM Limited. Other product and service names that appear in this press release are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
About IAR
IAR Systems is the world’s leading supplier of software tools for developing embedded systems applications. The software enables over 46,000 large and small companies to develop premium products based on 8-, 16-, and 32-bit microcontrollers, mainly in the areas of industrial automation, medical devices, consumer electronics, telecommunication, and automotive products. IAR Systems Group AB is listed on NASDAQ OMX Stockholm. For more information, please visit www.iar.com.
About Renesas Electronics Europe
Renesas Electronics is the world’s number one supplier of microcontrollers and a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, including system-on-chip and a wide range of discrete analogue and power devices. Established in 2010, Renesas Electronics combines the collective semiconductor expertise of Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and NEC Electronics, encapsulating more than 200 years’ experience.
Renesas’ products are the result of decades of research and investment into semiconductor technology and customer solutions. Today, they provide pioneering platforms for the advancement of the Smart Society, embedding intelligence, connectivity, safety and security in solutions for cars, homes, buildings and factories. In Europe, Renesas complements its cutting-edge technology with resources that foster customer proximity and span the entire product lifecycle. These include the European Technology Centre, which designs innovative solutions specifically for Europe, and the European Quality Centre in Düsseldorf, which provides technical support to customers throughout the region. Renesas also operates an effective ecosystem, comprising the industry’s largest local support network and an extensive network of over 800 hardware and software alliance partners.
