Dusseldorf, 22nd November, 2010 —  Renesas Electronics , a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions,and its Platinum Alliance Partner MPC Data Limited have announced a demonstration platform showing a Renesas Electronics MS7724 platform booting a Linux kernel and graphical QT application in less than one second.

The demonstration, which is available at http://www.swiftboot.com, adds support for the popular SH7724 Renesas Electronics 32-bit SuperH® microprocessor to MPC Data’s swiftBoot offering. The SH7724 is the latest microprocessor from Renesas Electronics’ successful SuperH lineup. Based on the SH4A core, the device operates at 500MHz delivering 900DMIPS and 3.5GFLOPS of performance. It features high performance hardware video processing and graphics acceleration allowing up to 720p video at 30fps, and an integrated LCD control unit. It is the flagship product in the high end of the SuperH portfolio.

Focusing on device specific tuning, MPC Data is able to cold boot to a functional application in less than a second on a broad range of SoCs, development boards and core architectures. 

Jonathan Short, MPC Data’s Embedded Linux Business Manager, commented: “Slow boot times are often unacceptable, particularly in consumer and automotive products where users expect almost immediate access to functionality. The extended functionality that we have come to expect from embedded devices often calls for a richly featured operating system such as Linux. Unfortunately, such operating systems come with an additional boot time overhead.

MPC Data offers a range of swiftBoot services that will be able to dramatically decrease the boot time of an embedded Linux device and give users an ‘Instant On’ experience.”

Some of the key market sectors that can benefit from quicker boot times include:

• Portable Navigation – Instant instrumentation feedback.
• Video conference system / security systems, in-home display for metering – Fast startup time for application times where startup can be a true selling feature.
• Media Player, Digital Camera – Instant-on user experience and data immediately available to the consumer.
• Power management – The ultimate low power mode is off. swiftBoot can be used as an alternative to complex power management and hibernation modes that can have substantial development costs.
• Industrial – Absolute minimal down time for industrial control embedded devices between reboots, firmware upgrades, reconfiguration etc.

Robert Kalman, Marketing Manager of Renesas Electronics Europe’s SuperH team, commented: “In certain applications, some customers have become used to long boot up times. This just serves to make this groundbreaking technological step from MPC Data all the more remarkable. The combination of this software with our SuperH is an ideal and very complete solution that will leave end customers very impressed indeed.”

MPC Data is a leading expert in embedded system boot time enhancement. With its range of swiftBoot engineering services, it has the solution for customers’ devices. Supporting Linux and uClinux on ARM, SuperH, MIPS & Blackfin based silicon. MPC Data’s deep technical knowledge and real world product development experience has enabled the company to gain a deep understanding of how Linux systems boot and how boot times can be optimized for any given platform or device. This, along with their development of benchmarking and profiling tools, allows them to quickly assess the boot process of existing systems and provide accurate estimates on possible speed improvements.

For more detail on swiftBoot products and services see http://www.swiftboot.com

About MPC Data

MPC Data is a leading turnkey design house in complete system and software custom design. MPC Data offers services in hardware and software engineering especially in industrial environments with a strong emphasis on embedded and/or real-time developments. With many years of experience in Windows Embedded, Embedded Linux and RTOS, and thanks to its partnership with Renesas Electronics and other market leading companies, MPC Data is the key partner for OEMs, offering consultation, software/hardware design and integration services from proof of concept to volume production.