Motorola and Aisys Team Up to Improve Time to Market for Embedded Designs.

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 2, 1999--Motorola, Inc.'s Networking and Computing Systems Division and Aisys Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) are working together to shorten the time required to develop device drivers and board support packages (BSPs) for high-end communications processors such as the Motorola MPC8260 and MPC860. Through technology exchange and cooperative product development, Aisys will provide system developers, via its DriveWay 3DE(1) system, automatic creation of efficient, optimized BSPs for Motorola's processors.

"When Motorola introduces a new integrated communications controller, one of our primary concerns is to help customers with the time-to-market aspects of their products," says Trey Oprendek, marketing manager for Motorola's Networking Communications Group. "Aisys' DriveWay tools help us achieve that task with our MPC8XX and MPC8000 processors. These processors feature anywhere from 28 to 45 on-chip peripherals that provide a tremendous amount of functionality but also add to the complexity of the development process. By automating the creation of device drivers for these peripherals and providing a fully functional BSP for the processor, DriveWay has repeatedly helped our customers save significant development time."

"BSP development is an area that was not covered by tools in the past. Developers had to build their own BSPs for their target boards using some sample code provided by us, or by the RTOS vendors," continues Oprendek. "DriveWay is the first solution to this problem, and it can save our customers a significant amount of time, making it easy to integrate our chips into their designs."

Drive Way tools - which support the MPC8260 PowerQUICC II(TM), MPC850, MPC860, MPC821 and MPC823 families of microprocessors - have a complete knowledgebase of each processor's peripherals. Developers can simply point and click to configure and generate complete boot code, device drivers and the interface layer between hardware and software that are required to build the board support package (BSP).

"DriveWay saves the software developer from having to learn the complex details of the hardware," says Shaul Gal-Oz, president of Aisys Inc. "It also gives designers the ability to easily port from one generation of MPC8XX processor to the next by not changing the API between the application and the hardware when the user switches to new hardware architectures."

"DriveWay saved us significant time on the board support package (BSP)," says Howard Harvey, software engineer for Computing Devices Canada (CDC). "Out of the box, DriveWay can spit out functional BSPs for supported boards. In our case, DriveWay was extremely helpful in configuring the 860T. Its ability to deal with the microprocessor's many peripherals in a point and click fashion and then produce working code first shot was miraculous. The ability to have a working BSP from day one is an amazing - and schedule-shrinking - benefit."

Ron Naismith, engineering principal technical specialist for Schneider Automation, agrees. "We used DriveWay to create the BSP and the drivers for both the evaluation and the custom boards for a Motorola 860-based design. It was a real aid in finding our way around the processor and meeting our time constraints of getting to a show with a prototype three months from project start."

In addition to quickly providing the board support package, DriveWay can be used for hardware debugging. When a hardware engineer gets a prototype target board to debug there is very little that can be done to test the board before the software is available. With DriveWay, it is possible to generate the boot code and the basic test and diagnostic code required to bring up and debug the board. This eliminates the need for writing a special software package - which is often throw-away code - to perform the hardware debug operation.

When Motorola develops a new microprocessor, Aisys developers get involved early, working closely with Motorola developers to learn the detailed configuration of the processor and each of its peripherals. This enables Aisys to have supporting DriveWay products available to customers as soon as the processors are available. In addition, Aisys is involved with cooperative training programs with Motorola to help customers learn how to integrate MPC8XX processors into their products, taking full advantage of functionality and features.

ABOUT MOTOROLA

As the world's number one producer of embedded processors, Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector offers multiple DigitalDNA(TM) solutions which enable its customers in the consumer, networking and computing, transportation, and wireless communications markets, to create new business opportunities.

Motorola's worldwide semiconductor sales were $7.3 billion (USD) in l998. Motorola is a global leader in advanced electronic systems and services. It liberates the power of technology by creating software-enhanced products that provide integrated customer solutions and Internet access via wireless and satellite communications, as well as computing, networking, and automotive electronics. Motorola also provides essential digital building blocks in the form of embedded semiconductors, controls and systems. Global sales in 1998 were $29.4 billion (USD).

ABOUT AISYS

Aisys Inc. (Santa Clara, CA) develops and markets design automation tools that significantly reduce software development time in embedded system design. DriveWay automatically synthesizes software (i.e., device drivers) to interact between the application and the hardware in an embedded system, generating a set of fully tested and documented drivers, boot code and test code tailored to specific compilers and RTOSs, including Wind River Systems (NASDAQ:WIND), Integrated Systems Inc (NASDAQ:INTS) and Microtec. DriveFast products provide accelerated development for microprocessors from Motorola (NYSE:MOT) based systems.

Aisys headquarters is located at 4633 Old Ironsides Drive, Suite 105, Santa Clara, California, 95054. Telephone number: [phone]; fax: [phone]; e-mail: [e-mail]; Web site: www.aisysinc.com.

(1) device driver design environment