Freescale introduces low-cost, full-featured evaluation board for StarCore-based SC3850 DSPs

The MSC8156 Evaluation Module (MSC8156EVM) is a PCI Express® short card form factor development solution that allows for the deployment of Freescale’s highest performing DSPs alongside the company’s QorIQ P4080 and P2020 multicore communications processors in a Single Board Computer format.

MSC8156EVM comes with Freescale’s SmartDSP OS (SDOS), the royalty-free DSP operating system, with integrated DSP drivers for many peripherals such as PCI Express, Ethernet and Serial RapidIO® as well as DDR memory interfaces. It also includes a three month evaluation license for Freescale’s full-featured, Eclipse-based CodeWarrior Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Tools included in the offering are an efficient SC3850 C compiler, assembly optimiser, debugger and extensive profiling and software analysis tools. The EVM also includes intrinsics, application notes and 40+ DSP libraries that help accelerate a customer’s design to market – whether porting from previous StarCore families or competitors’ DSP architectures.

Customers can purchase the evaluation kit for the price of $495 USD. Customers wishing to migrate to the more comprehensive MSC8156 Application Development System (MSC8156ADS) who have purchased the MSC8156EVM will receive a discount off the purchase of the MSC8156ADS platform. The discount represents the $495 cost of purchasing the MSC8156EVM.