eSOL Licenses ARM Compiler Tools For Micro Industrial TRON Embedded Systems Development Environments

CAMBRIDGE, England and TOKYO, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ARM [(LSE: ARM); (Nasdaq: ARMHY - news)], the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC processor solutions, and eSOL Co., Ltd, a leading Japanese provider of Micro Industrial TRON OS, including various middlewares, and the first Japanese component-aware development tools for embedded systems, today announced that eSOL has licensed the ARM® compiler and associated tools and libraries for use in eSOL's eBinder Micro Industrial TRON development environments. eSOL's range of RTOS kernels and associated development products already support a number of microprocessor cores, including the ARM7TDMI® core and the ARM940T(TM) core, and are compliant with the Micro Industrial TRON open standard for RTOS used in embedded systems. This agreement will give developers and engineers a comprehensive range of tools to support ARM Powered® devices that utilize Micro Industrial TRON.

By adhering to the Micro Industrial TRON standard, eSOL has developed its eParts® family, offering RTOS 'blocks' from kernel to protocol stack. eBinder® is a comprehensive development environment for use in conjunction with eParts that allows developers to use an intuitive graphical interface for designing embedded systems, making system design considerably quicker and simpler. The ITRON standard acts as a guideline for embedded systems developers, ensuring that the resulting RTOS is scalable across a wide range of embedded systems, deriving the maximum performance from the associated hardware and contributing to improved software productivity.

"The Micro Industrial TRON standard is extremely important to embedded system developers and manufacturers in Japan," said Derek Morris, general manager, Development Systems, ARM. "This agreement with eSOL will further strengthen our commitment to providing developers with the best possible tools and support for their ARM Powered solutions, while also supporting other technology standards."

"The launch of our eBinder product incorporating ARM core tools into the Japanese market is important for eSOL," said Bob N. Ueyama, Director of eSOL's embedded products division. "ARM's compiler leads the market in both performance and code density, and by incorporating ARM core tools with eBinder, we believe that both current and future eSOL customers will have access to the leading IDE and compiler combination."

The ITRON specification was first introduced in 1987, and a later version geared towards 8- and 16-bit systems was released in 1989 as Micro Industrial TRON. Micro Industrial TRON-specification kernels have been developed by the majority of Japanese embedded systems manufacturers, including Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Sony and Toshiba, and have become the de-facto standard in the Japanese market.

EDITOR'S NOTES

eBinder is the first in its class to support Multi-Context Debugging with Dynamic Loading capability, with powerful Shell and software component analyser. It can support not only basic kernels, but also any software components that have distinct control block and APIs. The Micro Industrial TRON specification kernel is the initial OS platform to support, with upcoming support for POSIX as well. eBinder also has an integrated instruction set simulator, which allows control of the interrupt controller, timer and serial device. The kernel that is provided with eBinder runs on eB-SIM, and comes complete with all necessary device drivers. eBinder is the first Japanese OS-Aware IDE that bundles ARM Developer Suite(TM) complier tools. eBinder for ARM is the most suitable IDE for development of ARM Powered consumer electronics products for the Japanese market and this agreement will enhance support for the ARM architecture across Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. As well as supporting the Micro Industrial TRON standard, future versions of eBinder will include support for Linux and other OS.

About eSOL

Founded in 1975, eSOL is the leading provider of total engineering solution, advanced development tools and software components. eSOL's development technologies build off its eBinder and eParts line of software products that enable engineers and designers to develop high-performed devices easily. eParts includes software "parts" from Micro Industrial TRON-specification RTOS, TCP/IP protocol stack to web browser for embedded system. Please visit eSOL's Web site at www.esol.co.jp for more information.

About ARM

ARM is the industry's leading provider of 16/32-bit embedded RISC microprocessor solutions. The company licenses its high-performance, low-cost, power-efficient RISC processors, peripherals and system-on-chip designs to leading international electronics companies. ARM also provides comprehensive support required in developing a complete system. ARM's microprocessor cores are rapidly becoming the volume RISC standard in such markets as portable communications, handheld computing, multimedia and embedded solutions. More information on ARM is available at http://www.arm.com .

eBinder and eParts are trademarks of eSOL Co., Ltd.

ARM, ARM Powered and ARM7TDMI are registered trademarks of ARM Limited. ARM940T and ARM Developer Suite are trademarks of ARM. All other brands or product names are the property of their respective holders. "ARM" is used to represent ARM Holdings plc (LSE: ARM and Nasdaq: ARMHY); its operating company ARM Limited; and the regional subsidiaries ARM INC.; ARM KK; ARM Korea Ltd.; ARM Taiwan; and ARM France SAS.

For further information, please contact Meg Matsumoto of eSOL Co., Ltd., +1 81 3 5301 5325, m-matsumoto@esol.co.jp; or Michelle Spencer of ARM, +44 1628 427780, michelle.spencer@arm.com; or Patrick Hall of The Townsend Agency, +1-858-457-4888, ext. 112, phall@townsendagency.com, for ARM.