1 December 2000 — The Nexus 5001™ Forum has given a strong welcome to the recent announcement by Motorola of its launch of the industry’s first embedded processor with a Nexus 5001 Class 3 debug port. The PowerPC™ MPC565 embedded processor is Motorola’s latest highly integrated embedded microprocessor, designed principally for automotive applications such as engine and transmission control. The device allows external development, debug and calibration hardware to access the microprocessor “on-the-fly” without intrusion on program execution, to monitor or change variables, trace program flow or alter calibration tables through a debug port defined by IEEE-ISTO 5001-1999, the Nexus 5001 Forum’s global standard.

Developed as a cooperative effort by the membership of the Forum, a consortium of microprocessor and development tool vendors, IEEE-ISTO 5001™-1999 specifies an open, global, general-purpose interface for development, debugging and optimization of automotive systems. The Forum’s objectives are the development, dissemination, and implementation of a global interface standard for debugging of embedded processors.

Motorola has been an active participant in the Nexus 5001 Forum from its inception, and with its introduction of the MPC565 processor, the company has helped the Forum to reach a major milestone: Industry implementation.

“Motorola has supported the Nexus 5001 Forum for a long time and is very pleased to see the industry working together to provide the end user access to critical processor functionality without intrusion on the program’s execution,” said Ron Stence of Motorola’s Powertrain Systems Operation and a member of the Nexus 5001 Forum’s Steering Committee. “For the first time, real-time debug can be achieved with an industry standard debug and calibration interface.” Michael Healy of Ashling Microsystems Ltd., Limerick, Ireland, also a member of the Forum’s Steering Committee, agreed with Motorola’s assessments.

“Motorola’s introduction of their MPC565 automotive processor brings the objectives of the Nexus 5001 Forum to reality,” said Healy. “By basing the debug-strategy for their new microprocessor on IEEE-ISTO 5001-1999, Motorola has given a strong endorsement to this new global standard while ensuring that the new device is supported by powerful and effective debugging methods. Development-tool vendors and embedded-system designers can now create a powerful, uniform and re-usable development environment for this new microprocessor. In less than a year since first publication of the Nexus 5001 Forum standard, we’ve seen it progress from concept to real silicon.”

The Nexus consortium now includes more than 30 companies, spanning the semiconductor, development tools and automotive electronics industries. Although the initial focus of the consortium was on the stringent requirements of automotive powertrain applications, the overall goal is to see the general-purpose standard applied and adopted by all industries that will benefit, such as data communications and computer peripherals, wireless systems and other embedded control applications.

Administration services for the Nexus 5001 Forum and dissemination of IEEE-ISTO 5001-1999 are handled by the IEEE Industry Standards and Technology Organization (IEEE-ISTO). The IEEE-ISTO is a not-for-profit corporation that offers industry groups a wide range of support services within a flexible operational forum. The IEEE-ISTO provides an environment in which to develop standards and to facilitate activities that support the implementation of standards in the marketplace. The organization is affiliated with the IEEE (http://www.ieee.org) and the IEEE Standards Association (http://standards.ieee.org/).

Contacts

Peter Lefkin
Secretary/Treasurer and CFO
IEEE-ISTO
+1 (732) 981-3434
[email protected]

Michael Healy
Ashling Microsystems Ltd.
National Technological Park
Limerick, Ireland
+353-61-334466
[email protected]

Starlyn Aurit
Motorola
Austin, Texas
+1 (512) 895-3486

PowerPC is a trademark of International Business Machines Corporation, used by Motorola under license from IBM.