PC programmers and embedded developers can move embedded devices into the Windows operating environment with BSQUARE's Windows Embedded CE 6.0 board-support package for the Cortex-A8 processor-based OMAP35x EVM (evaluation module) from Texas Instruments. Developers of industrial, automotive and consumer applications now have access to a free-source-code offering for Windows Embedded CE operating system-based designs to develop OMAP35x-based products faster than those created on embedded open source. With a production-tested board-support package that integrates a Windows Embedded CE 6.0 Pro kernel, DirectShow filters, a Visual Tools plug-in, an EVM Flash tool and support for DVI and S-Video, designers can develop with familiar and standard Windows Embedded CE APIs (application-programming interfaces) and concentrate on achieving a video and audio performance beyond general-purpose-processor capabilities. Using an emulator rather than specialised hardware reduces prototyping time and enables parallel development, claims TI. Design time is also reduced since the Windows Embedded CE image is built through component addition rather than footprint reduction. For enhanced DSP-based video and audio capabilities, the filters leverage the TMS320C64x+ DSP and hardware-accelerator performance of the OMAP35x processor via the codec-engine inter-processor-communication support. Developers can achieve multi-format video by exploiting the filters which can decode MPEG-2 and also decode and encode D1 video at 30 frames/s at 8Mbit/s for MPEG-4 and H.264. This feature is particularly relevant for multimedia-driven applications, such as portable navigation, point of services and portable media devices. There is also support for WMA9, MP3, AAC and G.711 decode facilities. The complementary Device Validation TestSuite (DVT) can complete the same tasks in just over 100 days instead of the usual 1200. The DVT is a comprehensive set of quality-assurance tests for OMAP35x processor-based designs. More personalised user interfaces and richer applications can be developed with an additional Adobe Flash Lite 3 port as a stand-alone player, available from BSQUARE. The software and engineering-services company also supplies an SDIO (secure digital input output) HX stack, allowing engineers to incorporate SDIO-peripheral, SD-memory-card and multimedia-memory-card support.
