Oki Semiconductor and IAR Systems Announce Availability of New IAR Embedded Workbench Tools for Oki’s ARM9-based Advantage Microcontrollers

IAR Systems’ Embedded Workbench® for ARM helps designers to easily develop reliable code for Oki’s ARM9®-based ML696200 Series MCUs

Sunnyvale, Calif., February 6, 2006 - Oki Semiconductor, a leading technology partner for the new era of digital communications and convergence, and IAR Systems, the leading development tools company for professionals, today announced that the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM® tool chain now supports Oki’s ARM9-based Advantage Microcontroller™ family. Building on the success of Oki and IAR Systems’ development of the Advanced Microcontroller Evaluation-51 (AME-51) Kit for Oki’s ARM7-based ML67Q4050 and ML67Q4060 Series – the world’s smallest ARM-based MCU – the two companies have again developed an industry-leading C/C++ compiler and debugger chain for designers to use with Oki’s ML69Q6203 CPU-Board, and other board designs that use and support a JTAG connector.

The addition of IAR Systems’ support for Oki’s ARM946ES-based Advantage Microcontrollers to its IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM tool chain is a continuation of the commitment both companies have made to provide designers of ARM-based devices with development solutions that are reliable and easy to use. The pairing of Oki's ARM9 CPU Board with the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM tool chain will enable product designers to easily evaluate Oki’s ML696200 Series MCUs for their designs, and allow designers of ARM7-based products to easily make the migration to Oki’s ARM9-based Advantage Microcontrollers, which offers higher performance and an innovative combination of high performance peripherals. Oki’s ARM7 customers who purchased an AME-51 kit and are using the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM 32KB KickStart software that was included with the kit can obtain a free upgrade that will enable them to make an easy migration to the ARM9 architecture at www.iar.com. A free ARM9 software upgrade will also be provided to those customers who purchased a support and maintenance contract with the full IAR EWARM Tool Suite.

Value-Added Customer Benefits and Features

For faster and easier evaluation of the advanced peripherals that are included in Oki’s ML696200 Series ARM9-based Advantage Microcontrollers, customers can benefit from the following product features of Oki’s ML69Q6203 CPU-Board:

»	A 20GB ATA Hard Disk Drive that is driven by the MCUs ATA Ultra-DMA66 interface;
»	A USB port driven by the MCUs USB 2.0 High Speed MAC and PHY device controller;
»	NAND Flash interface (512 and 2048 byte page size devices) supported with: - A Smart Media connector - NAND Flash device footprint
»	2MB of external Flash, 1MB of SRAM Flash, and 64 MB of SDRAM for application development and debugging;
»	A seven segment LED, additional user LEDs and pushbutton switches.

Commenting on today’s announcement, David Pelavin, senior director, logic business development, Oki Semiconductor, said, “We are ecstatic that our partnership with IAR Systems has enabled our customers to easily migrate between Oki’s ARM Advantage Microcontroller families. Designers who already have the low-cost ARM7 AME-51 Evaluation Kit can now use the IAR Systems tools from that kit with our ARM9 ML69Q6203 CPU-Board by downloading the new 4.31A version of the IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM 32KB KickStart tools.”

Support and Development Tools

IAR Systems’ development tools for ARM provide a complete and integrated development environment that offers designers the following benefits:

»	Complete software development suite controlled through a single Integrated Development Environment (IDE);
»	Kick Start 32KB C/C++ complier, assembler, linker, code editor, JTAG debugger with target control, and Instruction Set Simulator (ISS);
»	The debugger offers extended target visibility allowing access to all of Oki’s ML696200 Series Advantage Microcontroller registers by name. In addition, the debugger has an integrated Flash loader, which enables programming of the internal Flash of Oki MCUs;
»	IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM is RTOS-aware for popular RTOSes on the market.

Commenting on IAR Systems’ partnership with Oki on this effort, Andreas Lifvendahl, global account manager, IAR Systems said, “We’re excited by the continued trust Oki has in IAR Systems and our development tools for ARM. Extending the support to also include the ML696200 Series Advantage Microcontrollers proves two important points: Development tools should be scalable and grow with the user; and the technology should be robust enough to provide very compact binary code and ultra-fast code at the same time. IAR Systems’ tool suite meets both of these requirements and is an ideal fit for a variety of ARM-cores that have different performance requirements.”

Customers requiring greater than 32KB code size need only purchase an upgrade for IAR Embedded Workbench with its built-in C/C++ compiler and debugger tools. This upgrade enables seamless migration from evaluating the MCU to full product development with complete backward compatibility with any code already developed on Oki’s AME-51 Kit or ARM9-based CPU-board.

Product Availability

Oki’s ARM9-based ML69Q6203 CPU-Board (with or without the 20GB Hard Disk Drive) is available now through its distributor Nu Horizons.

IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM – Version 4.31A released February 3, 2006 – comes with full support for Oki’s ML696200 Advantage Microcontroller family. This new tool is available from IAR Systems’ sales offices worldwide and authorized distributors.

About IAR Systems

IAR Systems is a world-leading provider of embedded development tools:

»	IAR Embedded Workbench®—integrated development environment with C/C++ compiler and debugger supporting about 30 different 8-, 16-, and 32-bit devices.
»	visualSTATE®—state chart design tool for development of event-driven systems.
»	IAR KickStart Kit™—complete software and hardware evaluation environment available for selected targets.

IAR Systems’ customers represent many different market segments such as telecommunications, industrial automation and the automotive industry. The company was founded in 1983 and is part of the Nocom Group since 2005. IAR Systems operates in the US, China, Japan, Germany, the UK, Sweden, and Brazil. IAR Systems’ products are sold through a large network of distributors throughout the world. For additional information about IAR Systems, please visit www.iar.com.

About Oki Semiconductor

Building on Oki's century-long commitment to communications technologies and markets, Oki Semiconductor designs and markets a broad line of advanced integrated circuits for telecommunications, network, automotive, computer and consumer products. Oki's product lines include telecommunications, RF, laser, networking, speech synthesis, ASIC, microcontroller and memory devices, offered in a variety of creative packages. Founded in 1977 and headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Oki Semiconductor is a division of Oki America Inc., which is a subsidiary of Oki Electric Industry Co, Ltd. Oki has ISO-9000-certified manufacturing facilities in Japan and Thailand. Information on Oki Semiconductor and its products is available at www.okisemi.com/us.