Joint Effort Produces Linux Board Support Package

Renesas Technology Europe and its Platinum Alliance Partner MPC Data Limited launched a Linux Board Support Package (BSP) for the SH7712 Renesas 32-bit SuperH microprocessor. The Linux BSP is targeted at the MS7712SE01 development platform, which gives engineers a foundation with which to design new products, shorten their development time, and get products to market faster, according to the companies.

The Linux BSP, based on the SH3-DSP Linux 2.6 OS kernel, includes drivers for key peripherals, including dual 10/100 Ethernet, serial ports, a PCMCIA/ATA driver, and three timer channels. To assist development further, the BSP also contains a Filesystem, Busybox, a DHCP Client, and NFS.

Renesas’ SH7712 MPU is based on a modern 200MHz SH3-DSP CPU core with cache, XY-RAM, double-Ethernet with dedicated DMA support, and a bridge, as well as several other peripherals and JTAG debug. It's particularly suited to industrial, office automation, and network applications, such as factory automation gateways, network cameras, IP faxes, network printers, home gateway servers, and security equipment.