QuickLogic has announced that its programmable PCI bridge and hard drive controller for Intel's XScale PXA2xx (Bulverde) processors are supported by Viosoft's embedded Linux Development tools. Arriba Embedded Linux Edition for the QuickLogic Mobile Applications Platform can be used to develop drivers, loadable modules, and user-mode applications.

QuickLogic introduced its uWatt Programmable Bridge for the PXA2xx in March, saying the product would enable mobile device developers to quickly add PCI-based peripherals, including WiFi, UWB, and USB 2.0 chips to mobile devices such as handheld GPS, portable medical devices, VoWLAN PDAs, and smartphones. The company also offers a uWatt Programmable Controller that it says can offload IDE timing and polling from the CPU, while adding dedicated sector buffers.

Viosoft says its Arriba Embedded Linux Edition for the QuickLogic Mobile Applications Platform comes pre-configured for Intel's PXA270 Mainstone DVK system, and supports QuickLogic's Mobile Applications Board (MAB) running under Embedded Linux. The development environment is customized for the development and deployment of device drivers, loadable modules, and user-mode applications.

Intel's Mainstone board, with QuickLogic's MAB development board and an Atheros mini-PCI card
(Click to enlarge)

Claimed features of the Viosoft tools include:

• Source level debugger of kernel device driver (including init_module code), threads, and processes from a single connection
• Debugging of device drivers without pre-empting the PXA270 servicing of external interrupts.
• Graphical debugger GUI hosted on Linux and/or Windows platforms
• Ability to import, configure, and integrate various components of the Linux kernel with their applications code from a single desktop environment.
• GNU cross-compiler and utilities targeted for the Intel PXA270 embedded processor.
• An Embedded Linux Kernel and Filesystem image for the Mainstone evaluation board

Viosoft CEO Hieu Tran said, “The challenge with developing applications and drivers for today's embedded systems is the ability to debug multi-media applications at full system speeds.”

QuickLogic director of business development, Kevin Yee, added, “Arriba Embedded Linux provides our customers a rich and intuitive development environment to develop, debug and deploy mobile applications based upon QuickLogic's Wi-Fi and HDD Solution Packs. Now customers can effectively bring products to market more quickly for the portable and handheld markets.”

Availability

The Viosoft Arriba Embedded Linux Edition is available now for $4,999 from Viosoft. The WiFi and HDD Solution Packs, QV-PXA-MiniPCI and QV-PXA-IDE, are available for $999 from QuickLogic.

Additional details about using Viosoft's Arriba tools with QuickLogic's uWatt bridge are available in a whitepaper written by Tran.

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