Date: 21/10/2011

New version of Nucleus RTOS from Mentor supports DVFS

Mentor Graphics Corporation has announced its third generation flagship Nucleus Real Time Operating System (RTOS). The Nucleus product adds built-in power management capabilities that use hardware features such as Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS), making it suitable for power conscious, battery powered applications, says Mentor Graphics. New Nucleus connectivity features include a certified "IPv6 Ready" networking stack and security protocols, as well as a variety of wireless communication options such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee when developing connected devices.

The Nucleus RTOS readily supports a comprehensive set of architectures and processor families, including ARM, MIPS, Power PC, and SuperH, as well as DSPs and soft processor cores on FPGAs.

"Mentor's Nucleus RTOS targeting connectivity and low power demonstrates Mentor's understanding of issues critical to today's MCU-based designs," said Miguel Morales, director of marketing, Stellaris Cortex-M MCUs, Texas Instruments. "The scalable technology, ease of configuration and small footprint makes the Nucleus RTOS an ideal solution for designers using Stellaris microcontrollers."

"GCT is leading the 4G ecosystem with their single-chip LTE SoC solutions," said Larry Dano, vice president of product development, GCT Semiconductor. "Having Nucleus as a solid software foundation and ecosystem enabler has been key for us. Our focus on reducing component cost, lowering power consumption, and offering a smaller footprint aligns well with the newly enhanced Nucleus."

The Nucleus RTOS provides high performance while optimizing resource usage in a single-OS or multi-OS platform, suitable for resource-constrained devices (frequency and memory), and for environments where squeezing out every cycle-per-watt is critical across any system architecture, according to Mentor Graphics.

Through single API calls, application developers can use the built-in power management capability in the Nucleus product to accomplish complex tasks like changing system states or switching operating points in a portable and re-usable way, suggests Mentor. Due to configurability feature of Nucleus RTOS embedded system designers can customize system requirements.

"The growing number of our Nucleus customers is another proof point that Mentor continues to invest in best-in-class technologies and services," said Glenn Perry, general manager, Mentor Graphics Embedded Software Division. "We will continue this effort and work tightly with our hardware partners to help our mutual customers develop the most innovative products in the least amount of time."

"One of the main value points that Mentor provides is engineering efficiency in products such as the high-performance Nucleus ReadyStart platform and dynamic Inflexion UI software," said Michael Gabler, software team leader, Bosch GmbH. "Both have enabled us to develop our high-end cooktops the way we envisioned."

To know more visit www.mentor.com/nucleus.