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Product Brief

AMD Élan™SC400 Microcontroller and QNX® Realtime OS

Wafer
The µforCE Demonstration System for Mobile and Embedded Applications

The µforCE demonstration system provides a reference/demonstration platform for mobile and embedded product development using the ÉlanSC400 microcontroller and the QNX Realtime OS. Together, these products offer a robust alternative for system designers who require hard realtime performance, crash-proof operation, lower memory requirements, and extended battery life.

The ÉlanSC400 microcontroller offers a low-power Am486® processor core, PC/AT compatibility, and a sophisticated memory management unit (MMU) to ensure high performance and efficient mobile designs. The ÉlanSC400 microcontroller also combines all common logic and I/O functionality associated with an embedded or mobile computing system on a single device.

QNX is a fully scalable, 32-bit, realtime OS that takes advantage of the MMU to provide memory protection for all system processes-even device drivers. Field-tested in hundreds of thousands of mission-critical installations, the OS is optimized for non-stop, 7/24 operation.

To showcase QNX's exceptionally small memory footprint, the QNX In-Hand demo fits the following into just 4MB of ROM: POSIX RTOS, full-featured windowing system, TCP/IP stack, desktop-caliber web browser (HTML 3.2, JavaScript, frames, etc.), Internet dialer, email client, spreadsheet, text editor, contact manager, personal scheduler, several games, on-line help, PCMCIA support, and more. Source code for the applications is included with the QNX In-Hand Toolkit, along with a full development environment.


PRODUCT HIGHLIGHTS

TheµforCE Demonstration System Board:
ÉlanSC400 microcontroller that supports:
  • Matrix scan keyboard
  • Flash Minicard slot
  • PCMCIA type 2 slot
  • IrDA infrared
  • Serial port
  • Tritech 10-bit digitizer controller for pen input
  • Crystal audio chip for very high quality WAV audio output
  • Power supply logic based on Micrel power controller chips
  • 4 Mbyte Flash
  • 16 Mbyte DRAM
  • Demo of QNX In-Hand Toolkit, with variety of sample applications (HTML 3.2 browser, email, spreadsheet, PIMs, editor, several games, etc.) 
The system is also shipped with:
  • 64 key matrix scan keyboard
  • 480 x 320 ALPs LCD with
    resistive digitizer overlay
  • NiMH battery pack
  • A/C wall power converter
    cube (providing DC 12 V input toµforCE board)
  • Documentation: theory of operation, schematics, data sheets, and bill of materials

 ÉlanSC400 Microcontroller FEATURES:  ÉlanSC400 Microcontroller BENEFITS:
  • 33-, 66-, and 100-MHz @ 2.7 V or 3.3 V, 8 Kbyte cache, full static design
  • High performance, low power,
    small packaging
  • Integration of PCMCIA and graphics controller, PMU, UART, parallel and IrDA port
  • Built-in functions include:
    8259A, 8237A, 8254, RTC, RAM
    Ctrl, ROM Ctrl, 8-16-bit ISA bus
    controller, Local bus controller
    Integration of PLL, PMU, and lower
    voltage device offering
  • µforCE Demonstration System
    (features ÉlanSC400 microcontroller)
  • ÉlanSC400 microcontroller evaluation board (features Élan SC400 microcontroller)
  • Enhanced Am486 CPU Core
  • Optimized for mobile systems
  • Low-cost graphics to support QNX Realtime OS
  • Single-chip with integrated
    compatibility
  • Built-in power management
  • Reference platform for mobile or
    embedded computing designs
  • Complete evaluation, debug, and prototyping system for ÉlanSC400
    microcontroller/QNX RTOS-based designs

QNX Realtime OS FEATURES:
 QNX Realtime OS BENEFITS:
  • Built-in power management, event-driven architecture, small memory footprint, and execution from ROM (XIP)
  • Full memory protection for all processes, including drivers
  • Hard realtime determinism (5.8µsec per context switch on a 66-MHz ÉlanSC400 microcontroller)
  • Hot swapping for PCMCIA cards
  • True microkernel architecture
  • Fully modular embedded windowing system (under 400K)
  • RAD tools and source code for variety of small-screen applications
  • Choice of self-hosted development
  • Seamless graphical connectivity to the desktop, plus support for SMB, Telnet, FTP, DDE, OLE, CORBA, etc.
  • Maximum battery life
  • Crash-proof operation
  • Achieve high-speed data acquisition and guaranteed response times
  • Exchange peripherals without rebooting
  • Create modular, scalable designs and reuse binaries across products
  • Include only the GUI services your device requires
  • Create fully customized browser, email, and PIM in days, not months
  • Test and debug your applications before your target is ready
  • Share data with, or remotely control, devices in the field

QNX Chart

Operating System Design Support

TheµforCE/QNX In-Hand demonstration system was developed by AMD and QNX Software Systems. Both companies extend ÉlanSC400 microcontroller/QNX RTOS support beyond theµforCE system by providing evaluation hardware and software developer kits (SDKs). In addition, both companies offer training and design expertise to enable quick time-to-market for portable and embedded designs.

AMD tools include:

ÉlanSC400 microcontroller silicon: available in 33-, 66-, and 100-MHz speeds

ÉlanSC400 microcontroller evaluation board for extended development of ÉlanSC400 microcontroller/QNX Realtime OS designs; provides one platform for fast evaluation, debugging, and prototyping of designs

email: epd.support@amd.com

QNX In-Hand Toolkit includes:

Complete QNX RTOS with:
  • hundreds of standards-based utilities
  • drivers for hundreds of x86 peripherals
  • rich choice of filesystems (flash, SMB, NFS, CD-ROM, DOS, etc.)
Photon microGUI® embeddable windowing system with:
  • scalable anti-aliased fonts for low-resolution displays
  • built-in internationalization
  • support for seamless graphical connectivity to remote desktops

Photon Application Builder (PhAB)-code-generating visual design tool for quickly customizing any of the In-Hand applications. With PhAB, you can create complete prototypes without writing code, add context-sensitive help in HTML, and translate your interface into a variety of languages.

TCP/IP Developer's Toolkit-includes Berkley Socket API and choice of low-overhead IP managers for embedded devices

Watcom C/C++ compilers and tools-include symbolic debugger and execution profiler

Choice of cross-development or self-hosted environment

Source code for HTML 3.2 browser, email client, PIMs, text editor, several games, and utilities, etc.

email: info@qnx.com

QNX Site


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