Microsemi announces SmartFusion cSoC support with FreeRTOS

IRVINE, USA: Microsemi Corp., a leading provider of semiconductor solutions differentiated by power, security, reliability and performance, announced its award-winning SmartFusion customizable system-on-chip (cSoC) devices are now supported by FreeRTOSTM, a scale-able real time kernel designed specifically for small embedded systems, and can be used in any type of application.

FreeRTOS is an extremely popular and professionally developed kernel that can be used in commercial applications, completely free of charge, without any requirement to expose proprietary source code. With FreeRTOS product developers have access to a broader choice of operating systems and communication protocols for implementation on SmartFusion cSoCs, enabling the acceleration of their designs in industrial and networking applications.

According to Gartner Inc., the worldwide consumption of programmable devices such as SmartFusion cSoCs is expected to grow from approximately $5 billion in 2011 to $7.7 billion in 2015—with much of that growth in the industrial market.

"Expanding our portfolio with FreeRTOS will help support the adoption of SmartFusion cSoCs and allow us to better serve our growing customer base," said Rich Kapusta, VP, terrestrial products, SoC Products Group at Microsemi. "With significant increases in the industrial market's SoC consumption over the next several years, this will be a key area for SmartFusion cSoCs as we continue to focus on providing our customers with solutions that meet and anticipate their design needs."

SmartFusion cSoCs are the only devices that integrate an FPGA, an ARM Cortex-M3 processor and programmable analog, enabling full customization, IP protection and ease-of-use. Based on Microsemi's proprietary flash process, SmartFusion devices are ideal for hardware and embedded designers who need a true SoC that gives more flexibility than traditional fixed-function microcontrollers, without the excessive cost of soft processor cores on traditional FPGAs.

Microsemi is offering design examples for its SmartFusion evaluation and development kits with FreeRTOS support to qualified customers at no charge, including sample implementations available for Keil, IAR and GCC.