CAMBRIDGE, UK, February 2 , 2001, Crossware (www.crossware.com), a leading embedded software tools developer, has added support to its 8051 Development Suite for the mixed signal microcontrollers from Cygnal Integrated Products (www.cygnal.com). This includes simulation and debugging features as well as compiler and assembler support. Development of the software for these chips can now be carried out both with and without hardware from a single, user friendly environment.

Cygnal Integrated Products has introduced a range of microcontrollers based on a high speed 8051 core. The microcontrollers include flash memory, analog and digital devices as well as the normal 8051 on-chip peripherals. 10 bit and 12 bit ADCs are available and DACs, comparators, four timers and other features are standard.

The enhanced Crossware environment includes cycle accurate simulation of the Cygnal high speed core and so developers can rapidly determine the speed increase that can be achieved by moving to a Cygnal chip. The on-chip ADCs, DACs, comparators, additional timers, etc are all simulated and the unique manner in which the Crossware environment can be extended to simulate additional features means that developers can hook up these devices to simulations of custom peripherals to create a graphical simulation of the complete target system.

The Cygnal chips also include on-chip emulation circuitry. Accessible via a JTAG interface, this allows control of on-board memory and special function registers and provides program run, halt and single step support. Four hardware breakpoints are also provided. The Crossware environment supports these on-chip debugging features. Using an Emulation Cartridge available from Cygnal, which communicates with a PC serial port at a 115,200 baud rate, the chips can be programmed and debugged directly from the Crossware environment.