BIRMINGHAM, UK -- October 12, 2006 -- eCosCentric Limited, the eCos and RedBoot experts today announced the availability of the eCosPro^® real-time operating system for the Freescale Semiconductor MCF5213 ColdFire^® microcontroller. Each M5213EVB evaluation board will be distributed with an eCosPro Starter Kit allowing end-users to rapidly evaluate eCos and begin building applications based upon it. The eCosPro Starter Kit is a commercial-grade distribution of the eCos RTOS for deeply embedded systems, including a GNU-based compiler/debugger toolchain and graphical eCos Configuration Tool. eCosCentric also offers a direct upgrade to the full eCosPro Developer's Kit.

"We see strong demand from savvy system designers that wish to deploy eCos on 32-bit microcontrollers, without incurring the costs of external memory components", remarked Daniel Morris, Sales & Marketing Director at eCosCentric. "eCosPro on the MCF5213 ColdFire microcontroller makes a potent, feature-rich combination in compelling single-chip solutions."

"Working with eCosCentric to bring their eCosPro RTOS to the ColdFire family of microcontrollers brings significant advantages for Freescale's customers," said Jeff Bock, Global Marketing Manager for Freescale's Consumer and Industrial Microcontrollers. "By delivering the robust and scalable features of the eCosPro Starter Kit with each M5213EVB evaluation board, eCosCentric provides customers with key tools and services designed to enhance application development."

The MCF5213 microcontroller is an integral part of Freescale's Controller Continuum, offering system designers a peripheral packed, high-performance, cost-effective device that does not need external flash, RAM and associated memory buses. The eCosPro Starter Kit for MCF5213 includes drivers for the internal flash, RS232 and watchdog functions, along with support for interconnection via the SPI & I²C buses. A minimal eCos-based application, including support to write to the internal flash will need 3KiB of codespace. Hardware-based application debugging is provided via a BDM adapter.

About eCosPro

eCosPro is a stable, fully tested and supported version of the eCos open source real-time operating system and RedBoot bootstrap firmware. The eCosPro Developer's Kit is a distribution of eCosPro with commercial support & advice, prebuilt eCos host tools, compiler toolchains, full documentation, Eclipse-based integrated development environment to streamline eCos application development (including graphical debugger), C++ runtime (including Standard Template Library) as well as profiling, code coverage and memory allocation debugging tools. eCosPro-CAN is available for this and other ColdFire microcontrollers. Third party components certified with eCosPro include a Java virtual machine, an in-memory database, graphical user interfaces, CANopen and USB 2.0 compliant host, device & OTG stacks.

About eCosCentric

Founded in April 2002, eCosCentric is the leading provider of eCos and RedBoot support, training, development and consulting services worldwide. Staffed by the original eCos creators and highly experienced embedded system and software engineers, eCosCentric provides complete solutions consisting of run-time systems, complementary host tools and certified third party applications.

Freescale^™ and the Freescale logo are trademarks of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. ColdFire^® is a trademark of Freescale Semiconductor, Inc.
eCosCentric and eCosPro are registered trademarks of eCosCentric Limited.
I²C is a trademark of Philips Semiconductors.
All other company or product names mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

For further details visit http://www.ecoscentric.com/ecospro.shtml or contact eCosCentric for pricing and availability.