Designing a new product? Revamping an old one? Here’s how to guarantee success

Following up on the success of last year’s Power of Two program, Renesas and Micrium have opted to continue their partnership and remarkably popular promotion 

The way it works is pretty straightforward: Renesas’ RX and RL78 customers can get a free, single production license for Micrium’s real-time deterministic multitasking Kernel (uC/OS-II or uC/OS-III) and middleware (TCP/IP, USB, File System, CAN, and others) plus free support and maintenance from Micrium at no cost during the customer’s one-year development period.

This year’s go-round includes some noteworthy additions, including IAR Systems, and qualified applicants can get one free license seat for IAR Embedded Workbench. Also, Renesas and Micrium have now added μC/GUI to the program, which includes touchscreen support.

The latter component is particular noteworthy. For those unfamiliar, μC/GUI is universal graphical software for embedded applications that use a graphical LCD. It’s designed for single- and multi-task environments, and is adaptable to nearly any-size physical or virtual display with an LCD controller and CPU. The program is delivered with all source code, and developers can add a state-of-the-art graphical user interface with or without touchscreen support.

Now, as with most promotions, there are some rules to this deal, though they can hardly be considered as restrictive as a lot of what’s already out there. For one, the customer must use a Renesas RX or RL78 MCU product. Given that this is a Renesas-based promotion, this is hardly a stretch. Also, the product and software must be used in a commercial application. Unfortunately, this disqualifies hobbyists and students from participating. Third, the customer must be located in the Americas.

As last year’s program went to show, engineers stand to benefit a great deal from this promotion. Rather than worry about processor and software selection during the development of their product, they can instead focus on fine tuning the added-values of said product. Also, Renesas and Micrium are at the top of their respective industries when it comes to the quality of their products. Should the rare chance of something going wrong actually occur, the Power of Two program includes one free year of support and maintenance.

While all of this sounds like greater peace of mind, it also helps engineers get their products to market much more quickly. Rather than spending hours, days, and weeks trying to find components compatible to their products, the products are being built around the components. It’s a novel concept, especially when everything is being provided for free.

To learn more about the program, or to sign up for the Power of Two, go to Renesas.com.