Ramtron launches ‘VRS51L3074 Design Contest’ for design with the first FRAM-enhanced 8051 MCU

“The VRS51L3074 is a breakthrough combination that offers all the advantages of FRAM on a high performance 8051 microcontroller,” said Michael Hollabaugh, Ramtron VP of Sales and Marketing. “This contest is intended to encourage engineers to explore how the VRS51L3074 will benefit their application, as well as foster a competitive spirit among their peers.”

The contest will run from July 26, 2006 to November 1, 2006. It will take place in four regions – the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific and Japan - with one grand prize and five runner-up prizes per region, for a total of $20,000 in prizes. Contestants must make submission(s) to the region of their residence only. Designs will be judged on technical merit, originality, usefulness and design optimisation. For complete contest rules and submission forms, please visit http://www.ramtron.com/contest, or email designcontest@ramtron.com.

To participate, contestants must purchase a VersaKit-30xx development kit from their local Ramtron distributors at a discounted contest price of $49 instead of $99. Kits will be available to contestants for $49 from July 26, 2006 to September 29, 2006. The VersaKit-30xx facilitates system prototyping and design development with the VRS51L3074 and ships complete with development board, Versa JTAG programming/debugging interface, demo programs, and the software, C compiler, assembler and documentation required to develop with the VRS51L3074 MCU.

The VRS51L3074 combines 8KB of FRAM memory with a fully-integrated, high-performance system-on-chip. Features include an advanced 40-MIPS, single-cycle 8051-core, 64KB Flash with In-System/In-Application Programming, 4KB SRAM, a JTAG program/debug interface, digital signal processing (DSP) extensions and a robust digital peripheral set. Operating at 3.3 volts over the entire industrial temperature range, the VRS51L3074 offers the ideal embedded data acquisition solution, targeting a wide array of applications from sensors and metering to industrial control, instrumentation and medical devices.