NXP Semiconductors has announced the launch of the industry’s first CortexTM – M0 design competition, the “LPC1100 CortexTM - M0 DESIGN CHALLENGE”, to encourage and inspire India’s vast technical community to design and develop innovative embedded solutions. This is a global design challenge that is open to students, embedded developers and entrepreneurs from all over India and the rest of the world.
Microcontrollers are used in a myriad of applications, and are an essential building block of embedded systems. The applications that can be created are limited only to the creativity and innovative thinking of the designers to address the needs of consumers and industry.
“This initiative from NXP Semiconductors is designed to boost the Indian Electronic System Design and Manufacturing Ecosystems by making available the latest Cortex-M0 processor-based 32-bit microcontrollers and tools, giving the Indian design community an opportunity to develop world-class products that can compete with global peers”, said Ashok Chandak, Senior Director, Global Sales and Marketing, NXP Semiconductors India. “NXP is a leader in ARM 32-bit MCUs, and with the Cortex-M0 processor NXP is offering the industry 32-bit performance at 8-bit MCU prices, significantly raising the bar on price performance.”
“The Cortex-M0 processor is the smallest, lowest power, and most energy efficient processor available from ARM,” said Mr. Guru Ganesan, Managing Director of ARM India. “NXP Semiconductors is the first ARM partner to license the Cortex-M0 processor and launched its LPC1100 MCU family last November. We fully support this initiative which we believe will encourage, enable and inspire students and developers throughout India to create innovative and novel applications around the Cortex-M0 processor.”
This Design Challenge comes at a time when the Indian industry as a whole is gearing up to meet the need to reduce the hardware import bill by 2020, while the government of India and the state of Karnataka are promoting the development of the semiconductors ecosystem in India.
NXP Semiconductors will provide free LPCXpresso development tools to qualified contestants who apply to enter the “LPC1100 Cortex-M0 Design Challenge”. The worldwide Design Challenge is scheduled to run from Jan 25 to June 7, 2010. Participants are invited to register their entry by visiting the web link: www.lpc1100challenge.com
The two themes of the Design Challenge are:
1) “What can you do for 65c?”
2) “How would you Enhance LPCXpresso?”
There are three Phases in the “LPC1100 Cortex-M0 Design Challenge”.
Phase I – Conceptual Design
In Phase I, contestants need to provide a valid abstract, title and block diagram of their potential design. Qualified entries will receive a FREE LPCXpresso LPC1114 development board from our partner in this challenge, DigiKey. All qualified entries will move on to Phase II. Submissions for Phase I must be received by March 31st, after which they will be reviewed in order to continue to Phase II.
Phase II – Hardware Design
In Phase II, contestants will build a prototype and upload details of the working prototype as per contest rules (other design materials can also be uploaded to the contest website). Judges will choose 10 winners who will move on to Phase III. Phase III will be from March 31 to May 3.
Phase III – Final Prototype
The top 10 contestants will finish their design and ship the final working prototype to the NXP San Jose campus. Along with the prototype, contestants should also submit a 2 page brief and all related software projects. The top five finalists will be short-listed and the winners will be announced at ESC Chicago. Phase III starts on May 10 and ends on June 9.
Prizes
Contestants have the chance to win over US$10,000 in Apple gift cards. Some gift cards will be awarded to the community at NXP’s discretion throughout each phase for providing feedback on the LPCXpresso platform, and rating current contestant designs.
About NXP Semiconductors
NXP Semiconductors provides High Performance Mixed Signal and Standard Product solutions that leverage its leading RF, Analog, Power, Digital Processing and manufacturing expertise. These innovations are used in a wide range of automotive, industrial, consumer, lighting, medical, computing and identification applications. Headquartered in Europe, the company has about 29,000 employees working in more than 30 countries and posted sales of USD 5.4 billion in 2008. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.
