Aisys' New Embedded System Design Automation Tool Improves User Productivity by Supporting External Peripherals and Using Design Board Concept.

Business Editors and High Tech Writers

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 2001

DriveWay ME(TM) Device Driver Design Environment Adds Support

for MPC8240(TM) Processor

Aisys Inc., an embedded design automation solution provider, today introduced DriveWay Millennium Edition (ME), a device driver development product that will enable embedded system developers using external peripherals to generate device drivers and perform system verification much faster and more effectively than possible with traditional manual methods and previous versions of DriveWay.

"Our survey of 7,000 embedded developers indicates that more than 50% of all designs are not completed on time thus indicating a vital need for embedded system developers to invest in automated software development tools that can reliably and effectively reduce the otherwise manual, time consuming and tedious development effort," said Dr. Jerry Krasner, executive director of CMP Media's Electronics Market Forecasters which conducted the survey, published in April 2001. "The design process includes many stages, beginning with designing on an evaluation board and going through many iterations before beginning development on the final target board. At each stage, coding and debugging are time consuming tasks which the new breed of design automation tools such as the DriveWay ME are aimed at reducing."

Features and Benefits of DriveWay ME

Part of Aisys' DriveWay family of device driver development tools, DriveWay ME is built on top of the three main components (Knowledge Base, Shell, and Code Generation) of the existing DriveWay product architecture. DriveWay ME offers Window 2000 support, off chip peripheral support, and on and off chip integration through a new user interface that is based on a "Design Board" concept, similar to a printed circuit board (PCB) layout. Designers using DriveWay ME can select processors and their associated on-chip components and peripheral chips from DriveWay's Knowledge Base and lay them down into the Design Board in a similar fashion to designing a PCB.

For each processor and each external peripheral chip, DriveWay ME integrates an online interactive datasheet and built-in help system. These features help hardware designers and software engineers accelerate the learning curve required to fully utilize the robust capabilities of the microprocessors and the peripheral chips. Finally, DriveWay ME provides users the ability to perform on chip and off chip peripheral configuration and integration.

For each selected component or peripheral chip, DriveWay ME provides a dialog box for the user to configure the design parameters such as register value setting, memory map address, driver API function name, driver file name, interface mode, operation mode, protocol type, interrupt control, etc. For each configured component and peripheral chip, DriveWay ME checks the design parameters for conflicts or wrong value settings. If any conflict or wrong value setting exists, DriveWay ME pops up a warning message to let the user know what's wrong and to ask the user to change the parameter. Upon completion of the design, the user clicks a button and DriveWay ME automatically generates boot code, device drivers, and software glue.

DriveWay ME accelerates the hardware and software integration process, which is an integral part of embedded system design, resulting in reduced time-to-market and development cost.

First Implementation of DriveWay ME - Motorola's MPC8240

DriveWay ME will be available initially for the Motorola MPC8240. The MPC8240 is a highly integrated processor for the embedded and networking infrastructure markets. Operating at speeds of up to 266 MHz, the MPC8240 combines onto a single chip a PowerPC 603e(TM) core, an advanced-memory controller and a 32-bit PCI interface.

DriveWay ME-MPC8240 will fully support the following MPC8240 on-chip peripherals: PCI host or agent controller, two-channel DMA controller, message unit with intelligent I/O controller, one I2C interface, and an embedded programmable interrupt controller which includes four programmable timers. In addition to peripherals, DriveWay ME-MPC8240 also provides memory bank configuration for different memory devices such as SDRAM, FPM DRAM, EDO DRAM, flash, and ROM through the on-chip memory controller. Supported external, off chip peripherals include the serial controller and PCI Ethernet device. Finally, DriveWay ME-MPC8240 generates boot up code and software glue for the most popular commercially available real-time operating systems, compilers, and IDE tools and provides testing functions to test the target hardware design.

Why use DriveWay ME?

In an embedded system design, DriveWay ME is used to automate the creation of device drivers, boot code and software glue, which can save up to 70% of design time and 50% of development cost. Without a device driver automation tool, embedded design engineers would have to manually write these drivers, code and glue, a tedious process that can add months to the development cycle of an end product.

"Building on Aisys' long history of support for Motorola's PowerQUICC and PowerQUICC II microprocessors, we welcome DriveWay product support for the MPC8240 PowerPC integrated processor, " commented Brian Wilkie, vice president and general manager for Motorola's Computing Platform Division. "Where cost and implementation are critical requirements, the DriveWay embedded design automation tool will continue to enhance our customer's time-to-market and development cycles."

"This new release of DriveWay ME will allow embedded system developers to immediately take advantage of the external peripheral chips support, in addition to on chip configuration and integration to make the design seamlessly and speed up the time to market," said Rockson Huang, director of product marketing for Aisys. "It also provides a new guideline for chip vendors to develop configurable device drivers that can be stored in the DriveWay ME Knowledge Base thus offering a maintenance and support free environment for chip vendors to provide developers access to functional and configurable device drivers."

Product Pricing and Availability

Available immediately, DriveWay ME is initially available for the Motorola MPC8240 processor. Pricing for DriveWay ME-MPC8240 starts at $19,500 for a single seat license DriveWay ME supports a configurable target environment so users can select different operating systems such as VxWorks(R) and standalone, no operating system mode as well as providing the choices of compilers made by Wind River (GNU and DIAB). DriveWay ME runs on Microsoft(R) Windows NT(R) and Windows(R) 2000.

About Aisys

Aisys Inc. develops and markets design automation tools and services for embedded systems that help designers reduce development time by as much as 70% and development cost by as much as 50%. The company's flagship tool, DriveWay, currently supports microcontrollers and microprocessors manufactured by Motorola, Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor. Aisys was founded in 1994 and its headquarters are located in Santa Clara, California. For more information, please visit the Aisys web site at http://www.aisysinc.com.

Note to Editors: Aisys and DriveWay ME are trademarks of Aisys, Inc. All trademarks and registered trademarks used in this press release are the property of their respective owners.