Renesas Technology Announces Winners of 2008 HEW Target Server Design Contest

At its Developers Conference (DevCon), Renesas Technology America, Inc. announced the winners of the 2008 HEW (High-performance Embedded Workshop) Target Server Design Contest. First-place winner Todd Phelps of Calgary, Canada received a $5,000 cash prize for designing the rGUI runtime-reconfigurable graphical user interface. Second-place winner Salvador Perdomo of Las Palmas de GC, Spain received $3,000 for his design for an LCR complex-impedance meter. Third-place winner, David Kanceruk of Winnipeg, Canada was awarded $2,000 for creating a script-based production and testing tool.

Design entries that earned honorable mentions (cash prizes of $1,000 each) were "HEW Data Acquisition and Analysis with Python and SQL” (John Zarrella, California, USA), "HTS Workbench” (Wichai Tossamartvorakul, Bangkok, Thailand), "FFT based Spectrum Analyzer” (Juan Ramon Vadillo, Sant Quirze del Valles, Spain), "Multi-Channel Oscilloscope” (Ahmed Ebeed, Alexandria, Egypt), and "Three-Channel Oscilloscope” (Edgar Marx, Fischbach, Germany).

The design contest was hosted in conjunction with TechInsights, Inc. (www.TechInsights.com). It challenged participants to find innovative things to do with HEW Target Server (HTS) — a Windows COM object that provides an interface from Windows based programs into HEW, the Renesas integrated development environment for embedded systems. HTS lets a user interact with HEW and a target MCU or MPU through standard Renesas debugger interfaces.

"Although third-party tools to develop custom interfaces have been available for years in the form of costly hardware add-ons or space and resource-consuming firmware libraries, the HEW Target Server allows us to achieve an unprecedented level of simplicity, functionality, and integration, for free.” - Todd Phelps, First Place Winner.

Rob Dautel, eco systems manager at Renesas Technology America, who coordinated and executed the contest, said, "We were very pleased by the number of contest entries. In fact, we have shipped over 1,000 HTS kits, which were specifically made for this contest. The contest entries were both impressive and inspiring. We congratulate all the winners and thank everyone who participated this year. Be sure to watch for other exciting contests in the future.”

About winning design

The award-winning rGUI that Mr. Phelps designed is an excellent example of what HEW Target Server can do. This Windows-Forms based interface can be modified on the fly by adding, moving, resizing, and deleting dynamic controls, including labels, buttons, text boxes, and graphs. It couples the power of HTS’ direct memory interface with configurable controls, thereby allowing developers to create custom graphic user interfaces in just minutes – without using a Windows programming environment or writing any code. The innovative rGUI uses HTS to link each dynamic control with variables of the user’s choice. It achieves a high level of reusability, modifiability, and integration with HEW and any target processor. Renesas provides complete code for and information about rGUI at www.RenesasRulz.com/HTS/rGUI.

Information and code for the other contest winners, as well as additional HTS applications, are also available at no charge online at: www.RenesasRulz.com/HTS.

About Renesas Technology Corp.

Renesas Technology Corp. is one of the world's leading semiconductor system solutions providers for mobile, automotive and PC/AV (Audio Visual) markets and the world's No.1 supplier of microcontrollers. It is also a leading provider of LCD Driver ICs, Smart Card microcontrollers, RF-ICs, High Power Amplifiers, Mixed Signal ICs, System-on-Chip (SoC) devices, System-in-Package (SiP) products and more. Established in 2003 as a joint venture between Hitachi, Ltd. (TOKYO:6501) (NYSE:HIT) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO:6503), Renesas Technology achieved consolidated revenue of 951 billion JPY in FY2007 (end of March 2008). Renesas Technology is based in Tokyo, Japan and has a global network of manufacturing, design and sales operations in around 20 countries with about 26,800 employees worldwide. For further information, please visit http://www.renesas.com.

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