CAMBRIDGE, UK, April 19, 2005, - Crossware (www.crossware.com), a leading embedded software tools developer, has released version 3 of its C Compiler for Freescale's ColdFire microprocessors and microcontrollers. The new compiler, available as part of Crossware's ColdFire Development Suite, will simplify development and increase the speed of compiled programs.

The new compiler is able to carry out a flow analysis of a program and use this analysis to perform optimisations that are not otherwise possible. Also, additional calling conventions (ways in which the function call and function return are coded) have been added and these can be optionally used to further increase the speed of the compiled program. In addition, function parameters can be passed in registers and function in-lining can be used to completely eliminate the function call altogether.

"The development of the new compiler has been driven by earlier enhancements to our ColdFire Suite," says Alan Harry, founder and CEO of Crossware. "After releasing support for Freescale's MCF547x and MCF548x microprocessors, it was clear that these high performance chips would benefit from the additional optimisations that were potentially available and that we have now added to the new compiler."

Crossware has also developed a range of facilities to test the compiler and the libraries that come with it. For instance, a special version of Crossware's Embedded Development Studio is capable of automatically generating, compiling and executing complex expressions. The code produced is self-checking and execution will halt if a result is incorrect. Similarly, self-checking code can be automatically generated to test library functions, and randomly generated input data ensures that the library functions operate correctly with a wide range of inputs.

The new compiler is available as part of Crossware's ColdFire Development Suite and includes a C compiler assembler, linker, simulator and debugger all integrated into an easy-to-use development environment. A USB BDM (background debug mode) interface is also available to complete the set of development tools.

Crossware's ColdFire Development Suite allows developers to create, build and debug their ColdFire programs both with and without hardware. The totally integrated, user-friendly environment accelerates the development process and significantly reduces new product time-to-market.