CAMBRIDGE, UK, October 26, 2005, - Crossware (www.crossware.com), a leading embedded software tools developer, has released a new version of its ColdFire Development Suite which is able to build the Trio MP3 application software developed by Freescale Semiconductor for use by its ColdFire customers.

Based on the Flex real time operating system, the Trio MP3 application runs on the ColdFire MCF5249 and SCF5250 microprocessors. It includes not only an MP3 decoder and encoder but decoders for Microsoft Windows Media Audio (WMA), Advanced Audio Coding (AAC), Ogg Vorbis and other format files. These files can optionally reside on a hard drive, CD drive or SD card.

"In adding support for the Trio MP3 application, we are responding to the rapid growth of interest in compressed audio technology which looks set to extend well beyond the portable device and home entertainment environments into markets such as automotive," says Alan Harry of Crossware. "With the introduction of our new version of the ColdFire suite, users now have a choice of development environment for this increasingly popular and expanding application - and can take advantage of the enhancements to our Embedded Development Studio which will speed the whole development process."

Freescale supplies its Trio MP3 application as source code and a set of precompiled libraries. A set of 'makefiles' is also supplied which are used to control the compiler, assembler and linker during the build process. However, an enhancement to the Crossware Embedded Development Studio enables these 'makefiles' to be used to automatically create the files necessary for the application to be built from within Crossware's user friendly GUI development environment.

For example, the user has simply to browse to the folder containing the master 'makefile' and the Embedded Development Studio will create the completely configured development Workspace in less than 30 seconds. The application can then be immediately built, downloaded and run on the target board. Flash videos illustrating the Workspace creation, build and download process are available on the Crossware web site at http://www.crossware.com/mp3player.

The Trio MP3 application can be downloaded to the target board via a simple parallel port BDM (background debug mode) interface. However, this process is much faster using Crossware's FireFly USB BDM interface. FireFly is three times faster than a parallel port interface when downloading into SDRAM, and almost eight times faster when downloading into FLASH.

Crossware's ColdFire Development Suite is available as a 15-day fully functional package thereby allowing developers who have Freescale's Trio MP3 software to download this evaluation version and build the complete MP3 application.