IAR Systems partners up with IP provider CAST to boost 8051 development

Uppsala, Sweden—December 10, 2014—IAR Systems®, the world-leading vendor of development tools for embedded systems, today announces that the company has partnered up with the semiconductor IP provider CAST Inc. to offer new possibilities for developers working with 8051-based applications. With the recently introduced version 9.10 of the high-performance development toolchain IAR Embedded Workbench® for 8051, complete tool support for CAST’s 8051 microcontrollers is available.

CAST helped pioneer 8051 intellectual property in 1999, and continues as an 8051 IP leader with hundreds of customers successfully shipping products. Partnering with 8051 design experts Silesia Devices, CAST’s offerings include world-class 8051 MCUs that are among the fastest and the smallest such IP cores available. With proven reliability and easy development, these fast, small, and power-efficient modern 8051s are finding new life paired with sensors or communications functions in Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, and wearable electronic applications.

IAR Embedded Workbench for 8051 is a complete set of development tools for microcontrollers based on the 8051 core. For simplified development workflows, the tools feature integrations for a range of hardware debug systems and device configuration tools. IAR Systems has in cooperation with CAST developed a plugin for the C-SPY® Debugger in IAR Embedded Workbench with support for CAST’s native on-chip debug package. Thanks to this integration, developers can take full advantage of the powerful and easy-to-use features in IAR Embedded Workbench for 8051.

“We are happy to partner with IAR Systems around our 8051 microcontroller cores,” says Nikos Zervas, chief operating officer for CAST Inc. “Our customers appreciate the user-friendly and highly efficient compiler and debugger tools from IAR Systems, and the latest version of IAR Embedded Workbench for 8051 delivers both excellent new utility and even better code performance and compactness.”

“This partnership with CAST will help more developers meet the growing needs for low power, high performance and energy efficiency, especially within the Internet of Things,” says Stefan Skarin, CEO, IAR Systems. “Our broad device support and strong ecosystem of partners is now even more powerful, and users of our development tools can be sure they will be able to maximize the performance of their products based on CAST’s 8051 IP technology."

More information about IAR Embedded Workbench for 8051 is available at www.iar.com/ew8051.