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Direct from the distributor


As pressure mounts in both terms of time to market and product complexity, what engineering services and support for new product development are available from distributors? Steve Clark takes a look at what Arrow is currently offering


W


ith the increasing complexity of today’s high-tech products, and constant pressure on time to


market, product developers are looking to their suppliers for greater support. As a result, more design is happening in the supply chain, to deliver reference designs, plug-and-play hardware, software and firmware that help designers prove concepts quickly and fast-track new projects into prototyping and on to production. The trend for component distributors to transition from a straightforward selling role to become technical partners capable of providing design-in expertise, has been well under way for more than two decades. Even today, the distributor’s technical role continues to break new ground; today’s customers expect real engineering support. In particular, reference designs and associated hardware, firmware and software that help prove concepts and get prototypes up and running quickly enable customer’s engineers to focus their increasingly precious resources on creating the differentiating features that will make the product stand out in the marketplace.


add value to existing evaluation kits from manufacturers.


Flexible development platform For a reference design to deliver value, it must provide useful solutions to basic challenges such as power supply design, the embedded processing subsystem and connectivity. Crucially, however, it must also give engineers the flexibility to achieve the desired, unique end product. A vast number of evaluation boards are available today from semiconductor manufacturers, which provide a quick introduction and a fast start to designs based on a chosen product or chipset. The hardware may be supplied with relevant CAD data facilitating inclusion in the end product. A more flexible and adaptable approach to development is emerging, based on a modular approach that allows engineers to choose from a variety of processor boards or special function modules, for example, that connect to a “bare bones” chassis via standard interfaces. An example is the Freescale Tower System for embedded development, which allows engineers to choose from a wide range of plug-in microcontroller boards and combine these quickly with other modules such as boards containing MEMS sensors or wireless communication modules supporting popular standards such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or ZigBee.


As engineering skills continue to increase within the distribution channel, distributors are able to take advantage of their position in the supply chain to create even more flexible platforms aiding proof of concept, prototyping and testing.


Taking advantage of their connections with multiple suppliers, offering a variety of technologies and product ranges distributors are able to offer versatile combinations of resources to their customers. By using in-house design skills, as well as links with third-party specialists such as software developers, they are able to create development platforms and reference designs combining products and technologies from multiple suppliers, or


28 March 2012


Value-added partnerships Distributors are also adding value to evaluation boards and reference designs from their suppliers by combining them with other enabling products from the linecard. In 2008 TI introduced its first- generation BeagleBoard, an open-platform development board for embedded multimedia and advanced user-interface applications featuring its OMAP3 ARM


Components in Electronics


Cortex-A8 system on chip, a 2D/3D graphics processor and TMS320 DSP. The latest generation of the board, BeagleBoard-xM, enhances the original concept by adding an on-board USB hub, microSD slot, standard DB9 serial connector, and camera port.


As an open platform, the BeagleBoard has historically been popular for Linux- based development. More recently, third- party developers have introduced Windows Embedded board support packages (BSPs) that speed up development and help engineers to make use of features such as USB OTG host/client functionality, OpenGL graphics and mass storage using on-board Flash. To enable developers to take full advantage of the BeagleBoard and Windows in embedded projects, Arrow created the BeagleBundle by adding a Windows Embedded Compact 7 licence at no extra cost to the user. Developers using BeagleBundle can choose from any of the third-party Windows BSPs available for the BeagleBoard.


Evaluation platforms targeted at a more focused set of applications and markets are also entering the market. By combining in- house engineering competencies and partnering strategically with one or more component manufacturers, some distributors are creating boards that help customers apply new technologies in established sectors. Arrow’s Powerlink evaluation xKit was created with partners including Altera and Freescale as well as the Ethernet Powerlink Standardisation Group (EPSG), and simplifies the challenges facing companies targeting markets for Ethernet-based automation.


ASIC design services ASIC design services are another area of product lifecycle services in which Arrow is making a significant investment in, along with its FPGA design services. Arrow is one of just a few distributors who provides ASIC design and manufacturing services with its own experienced design team, across multiple global design centres, offering Analogue, Mixed-Signal, RF, and Digital design expertise, as well as, access to multiple world-class semiconductor fabs and a large portfolio of high-value IPs. These include a broad range of process geometries from 180nm to leading-edge process geometries such as 40nm. Arrow, as part of a broadline portfolio of turnkey ASIC services, can provide a financially- stable and vendor-independent alternative to pure-play or captive ASIC suppliers.


Ultra low-cost kits An alternative approach for fast-tracking new projects is to use one of the emerging generations of kits that offer extreme simplicity and ease of use for microcontroller or FPGA-based designs. A popular form factor is a USB “stick”, which can be plugged in and powered from the host PC. The design environment may be provided by the vendor or a third-party tool vendor. STMicroelectronics’ STM32- ComStick is one example. The stick ships with a tailored, non memory-limited Hitex development toolchain and provides an introduction to the networking features of ST’s 32-bit STM32 ARM Cortex-M3 microcontroller family. The BeMicro RTE stick is a low-cost platform for developing Industrial Ethernet slave systems such as I/O modules, sensors, actuators and motors. It contains an Altera Cyclone IV FPGA as well as all the components needed for Industrial Ethernet communication, and connects directly to the host PC’s USB port, or a USB hub. An expansion connector is also provided, for connecting additional hardware to the FPGA. The stick is available either as a standalone platform for development or as part of the Powerlink xKit mentioned earlier.


For projects utilising soft-core embedded


processors such as the Altera Nios II processor, the BeMicro SDK (Software Development Kit) combines a plug-and- play USB stick and supporting design environment, templates and BSP. The stick has additional features including an Ethernet port, microSD slot, on-board sensors and operating systems support, and can be used to speed up development of a wide variety of embedded designs. With so many choices now available to developers, identifying the optimum reference design or development platform on which to base a project can demand a significant investment at an early stage in the project. To address this challenge, an evaluation programme providing the opportunity to trial evaluation kits, development boards, reference designs and other tools can be a valuable service prior to committing budget and resources to a specific vendor’s solution or to a new silicon architecture. Arrow’s Testdrive programme allows engineers to evaluate and use leading-edge development tools at no charge for up to 28 days.


Arrow | www.arrow.com


Steve Clark is Marketing and Engineering Director at Arrow Electronics


www.cieonline.co.uk


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