AMCC is shipping a Linux development kit for its 440EP processor for imaging and industrial applications. The kit includes a “Yosemite” board from Embedded Planet, along with tools, sample applications, benchmarks, hardware design files, and evaluation versions of embedded tools from LynuxWorks, Denx, and Embedded Toolsmiths.

(Click for larger view of Yosemite board)

The 440EP chip

AMCC's 440EP is a general purpose embedded SoC (system-on-chip) based on a PowerPC core clocked up to 533 MHz. It integrates an FPU (floating point unit), USB and NAND Flash interfaces, 32-bit PCI interface clockable up to 66MHz, dual Ethernet ports, and a variety of standard serial, GPIO, and I2C peripherals.

AMCC 440EP function block diagram

AMCC's 440EP kit includes a 5 x 7 inch Yosemite board based on an AMCC 440EP processor clocked at 533MHz. The board was designed for AMCC by Embedded Planet, and is supplied with schematics and layout files, as a starting point for custom hardware designers.

Other features of the Yosemite board include:

• 256MB of SDRAM
• 32MB of Flash
• Two 10/100 Ethernet ports
• One USB 2.0 port
• Two USB 1.0 ports
• JTAG connector
• Trace connector
• PCI host connector
• Linux (2.6 kernel) in Flash
• Uboot boot firmware in Flash

AMCC says its 440EP development kit comes with a resource CD containing:

• Sample applications:
  • web server
  • telnet server
  • FTP server
  • game
• Utilities with source code
  • Detailed configuration reporting
  • Setting IP address and MAC ID
• Evaluation versions of software tool products from:
  • Denx Software Engineering
  • Embedded Toolsmiths
  • LynuxWorks
  • Green Hills
• System-level benchmarks
  • TTCP
  • DBench
  • Dhrystone
  • Whetstone
  • HINT
  • STREAM
  • MPEG-4

The kit additionally includes Kozio's kDiagnostics, a suite of processor and board diagnostics available for customer licensing.

Memec Insight's technical marketing manager, Steven Howell, said, “The selection criteria for choosing an embedded processor have shifted. Customers are closely examining the breadth of development tools and software support available with each processor.”

Embedded Planet's VP of sales and marketing, Matt Hoover, said, “AMCC's 440EP evaluation kit is one of the most comprehensive evaluation kits on the market today.”

AMCC's director of PowerPC software, Charlie Ashton, said, “The 440EP evaluation kit serves as a cost-effective means to evaluate the 440EP processor as well as a launch pad for our customers to start the development of their products based on the 440EP.”

Availability

The 440EP development kit is available now. AMCC says it will ship a similar kit for its networking and storage control plane chip, the PowerPC 440GR, early next quarter. That kit will include a “Yellowstone” board, also designed for AMCC by Embedded Planet.

AMCC purchased the 400-series line of PowerPC chips from IBM in April of last year.

 
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