Renesas Electronics America and IAR Systems Enhance RZ Express Program to Simplify HMI Application Development

SANTA CLARA, Calif., July 7, 2015 — Renesas Electronics America, a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced that IAR Systems®, a world-leading provider of embedded development tools, has joined Renesas and Express Logic, a worldwide leader in royalty-free real-time operating systems (RTOSs) to support the popular Renesas RZ Express program. This optimized package integrates a powerful microprocessor (MPU), leading commercial RTOS and middleware, and software design tools to accelerate the design process and reduce execution risk by providing a proven path to high-performance human machine interfaces (HMI).

“The increasing design complexity facing the embedded industry is challenging, particularly for embedded designers working with HMI applications for building-automation, appliances, and industrial control. We have teamed up with IAR Systems and Express Logic to remove some of these pain points,” said Vin D’Agostino, Vice President General Purpose Unit, Renesas Electronics America. “The RZ Express program brings the power and performance of our industry-leading technologies to help designers quickly and effectively build differentiated HMI solutions on top of the Renesas RZ/A1 hardware platform.”

The RZ Express program now offers qualified embedded designers developing a commercial application with the Renesas RZ/A1 high-performance MPU the chance to obtain a valuable single-seat license of the IAR Embedded Workbench® for ARM® C/C++ compiler and debugger toolchain at no cost.* Additionally, qualified users will have a 30-day period in which they can order additional seats at 50 percent off. As part of the new RZ Express program, embedded designers will also receive one High Resolution Embedded GUI Solution Kit, which features the Renesas RZ/A1H MPU.

“Becoming part of the RZ Express program demonstrates IAR Systems’ close and ongoing relationship with Renesas. Together, we can leverage our respective strengths to provide best-in-class hardware and software solutions that ensures a successful user experience for customers using Renesas RZ/A1 MPUs in their embedded designs,” noted Robert DeOliviera, Director Strategic Sales, IAR Systems.

“The widespread adoption of touch screens and user friendly GUIs has radically changed the expectations of HMI applications and devices,” noted William E. Lamie, President of Express Logic. “Our X-Ware Platform already provided the RTOS, network stacks, file system, and GUI tools and now with IAR’s contribution of excellent development tools, RZ Express gives engineers all they need to rapidly develop reliable, responsive, and graphically-pleasing products within a minimal footprint and with the highest real-time performance.”

The RZ Express promotion is available now for a limited time and is only valid in the Americas (North America, South America, and Central America). Qualified customers* can request a single-product license for Express Logic and IAR Systems software tools by applying to the program online here. The Express Logic software, the tools from IAR Systems, and Renesas RZ/A1 MPU platform are tightly integrated though a large number of free sample software projects that customers can download from www.expresslogic.com/download_center to get up to speed rapidly.

About Renesas RZ/A MPUs

The Renesas RZ/A series of MPUs combine a high-performance ARM® Cortex-A9 processor with up to an industry-leading 10MB of on-chip RAM to support faster device control, digital audio and video-signal processing, and much more. The large on-chip RAM combined with the ability to execute code in-place from cost-effective QSPI flash memory removes the need for external SDRAM, enabling low-power, cost-effective embedded display applications. The RZ/A MPUs can also drive two simultaneous displays at up to WXGA resolution, using on-chip SRAM for the graphics frame buffers.

About IAR Embedded Workbench

IAR Embedded Workbench is a set of high-performance development tools for applications based on 8-, 16-, and 32-bit microcontrollers, including the entire range of Renesas MCUs. It incorporates powerful compiler and debugger tools into one completely integrated development environment used for developing, building, and debugging embedded applications with strong requirements on performance and reliability. It is easy to use and provides advanced and highly efficient optimization features.

About Express Logic RTOS/Middleware

Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS is deployed in over two billion electronic products, most of which are powered by ARM-based processors. Express Logic’s ThreadX RTOS and Express Logic’s related middleware provide priority-based, pre-emptive, real-time scheduling, messaging, NetX™ and NetX Duo™ TCP/IP stacks, FileX® embedded MS-DOS-compatible file system, USBX™ Host/Device USB protocol stack, and GUIX™ embedded graphical user interface development toolkit for these systems. The Express Logic products strongly complement the Renesas RZ/A MPU.

For more information on Renesas, follow Renesas Electronics America at @RenesasAmerica on Twitter and http://www.facebook.com/RenesasAmerica.

(Remarks) IAR Systems, IAR Embedded Workbench, C-SPY, C-RUN, C-STAT, visualSTATE, IAR KickStart Kit, IAR Experiment!, I-jet, I-jet Trace, I-scope, IAR Academy, IAR, and the logotype of IAR Systems are trademarks or registered trademarks owned by IAR Systems AB. All other product and service names that appear in this newsflash are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

*Terms and conditions apply. See http://am.renesas.com/RZExpress/Terms_and_Conditions for more details on the RZ Express program qualification criteria. Limited to one free IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM seat per company.

About Renesas Electronics Corporation

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723) delivers trusted embedded design innovation with complete semiconductor solutions that enable billions of connected, intelligent devices to enhance the way people work and live. A global leader in microcontrollers, analog, power and SoC products, Renesas provides comprehensive solutions for a broad range of automotive, industrial, infrastructure, and IoT applications that help shape a limitless future. Learn more at renesas.com. Follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

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