Santa Cruz, CA — (press release exerpt) — A new survey of embedded systems developers by industry research firm Evans Data Corporation. reveals that availability of development tools is an overriding consideration — second only to performance — when selecting a CPU. When asked what their most important consideration is when selecting a microprocessor, nearly a quarter of the developers interviewed chose development tools, which beat out other factors such as cost and support.

The survey also revealed that the use of digital signal processors (DSPs) in designs is on the rise, with most respondents using Texas Instrument's family of processors. Over 65% of the developers who use DSPs said they use a TI processor. The Texas Instruments TMS320C5000 family was the most popular processor, used by 28% of the respondents, while Analog Devices' ADSP 21xx followed in close second, used by 27%.

The most recent volume in the bi-annual Embedded Systems Developer Survey series will be released to subscribers this week. It includes interviews with over 500 developers actively working with embedded systems, and includes information about hardware and software platforms, Linux and open source software, applications, Java, tools, language, and more.

Other key findings from the March 2002 survey:

• Despite being relatively new on the market, almost 25% of developers are already using, evaluating, or considering the use of a configurable/customizable processor.
  
• SoC (System-on-Chip) designs appear to be catching on with embedded systems developers. Nearly a third of the developers said that they were already using them in a current design or planned to in a future design.

 
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