ORLANDO, USA (FTF 2010): Mentor Graphics Corp. has announced its commercial Mentor Embedded Linux platform supporting Freescale Semiconductor, resulting from the recent strategic alliance signed between Freescale and Mentor for embedded Linux technology.
The platform, built upon shared Freescale and Mentor technology, provides comprehensive open source Linux software and tools, as well as maintenance and support. This provides a unified workflow methodology, enabling customers to create innovative and customized applications for Freescale’s QorIQ and PowerQUICC processors—with greater productivity and reduced risk.
The Mentor Embedded Linux platform currently supports the QorIQ P4080 and P2020 multicore processors and PowerQUICC 8572 and 8377 communication processors, with planned support for Freescale’s newly announced low-power QorIQ P3041processor and the new high-performance 64-bit e5500 platform, including the QorIQ P5020 dual-core and P5010 single core processors. The Mentor Embedded Linux platform will be compatible with Freescale’s 32-bit and 64-bit processors.
The Mentor Embedded Linux platform is a fully integrated, vendor-independent solution to help project teams move seamlessly from prototyping on reference hardware to custom-designed hardware running on commercial Linux and advanced development tools. The Mentor Embedded Linux platform also helps Freescale customers develop more reliable applications in a shorter amount of time.
“Mentor Graphics is our strategic Linux partner based on their exceptional embedded technologies and expertise in open source,” said Brett Butler, vice president and general manager of Freescale's Networking Processor Division.
“The Mentor Embedded Linux platform for our family of QorIQ multicore and PowerQUICC communications processors provides our joint customers with a seamless solution that takes them from product evaluation to prototyping and ultimately to high volume production, helping to further the development of today’s advanced and innovative products.”
“The Mentor Embedded Linux commercial platform is a major milestone for Mentor Graphics. Our strategic collaboration with Freescale has created a unified engineering methodology that provides great value to our mutual customers,” stated Glenn Perry, general manager of Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. “Our unified workflow methodology will help our customers develop better products under aggressive time-to-market schedules.”
Key technologies enable shorter time to high-volume production
The main components of the Mentor Embedded Linux platform include Mentor Embedded System Builder and Mentor Embedded EDGE technologies. System Builder is a powerful and flexible build engine providing the system developer with an easy “out-of-the-box” experience while providing virtually any type of platform customization.
The EDGE technology is built upon the Eclipse platform, providing a familiar user interface enhanced by Mentor-created plug-ins. When coupled with Mentor’s debug engine and target agent, it provides a platform for a compelling multicore, multi-OS debug experience for bare metal, kernel, device drivers and applications all through a single connection.
The Mentor Embedded Linux platform also delivers tested and proven commercial quality tool chains, precompiled “runtime” binaries, maintenance, and support. The System Builder technology produces an Application Developer Kit (ADK), which can be used by application developers either integrated with EDGE IDE or directly from the command line.
Key highlights of the Mentor/Freescale alliance are the common work-flow, toolchains, and kernel versions provided to the prospective embedded Linux developer. Silicon evaluation is typically performed using the semiconductor-supplied Linux distribution with generally no support for this Linux distribution.
As momentum builds in a project's lifecycle, it becomes much more difficult to uproot developers who have gained familiarity with a particular build methodology.
Conversely, the Mentor Embedded Linux platform provides a common build methodology and allows the development team to move to a commercially supported, full-featured distribution with minimal impact to the overall project. This compelling competitive advantage, provided by the Mentor Embedded Linux platform, allows customers to get products to market faster.
Maintenance and support address customer development needs
Maintenance and support are crucial to customers, so the Mentor Embedded Linux product includes comprehensive support for development tools and open source technologies. This includes access to the latest, stable and compatible open source technology, with updates on new cores, component versions, and defect resolutions twice per year. Consulting services are also provided to help customers address unique product platform needs beyond standard support questions and reference configuration.
The Mentor Embedded Linux platform for Freescale processors will ship in July 2010.
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