uClinux - Ported to Motorola ColdFire® MCF5249

A SnapGear engineer recently completed uClinux support for the new Motorola MCF5249 ColdFire® CPU, specifically for M5249C3 development board. Patches have been made available for 2.0.x and 2.4.x versions of uClinux kernels.

Chief Software Wizard, Greg Ungerer, said "The standard ColdFire peripherals - UART, timer, and interrupts are working. I have cranked the internal PLL up to 140MHz which is giving something like 125 Dhrystone MIPS, this is a fast chip!"

The Motorola MCF5249 CPU, which uses a V2 ColdFire processor core, is a highly integrated microprocessor with on-chip audio and IDE controllers which mean lower development costs and shorter time-to-market. The processor was designed to enable fewer system components and, with low system power requirements, allows the design of products with longer battery life.

Motorola's 32-Bit Embedded Controller Application Manager, David Seymour, stated "The MCF5249 is entering the market at a time when a convergence between home audio electronics and computer technologies is taking place. The MCF5249 is aimed directly at such growing markets as biometric security, industrial control, and even personal audio."

"We're very pleased to partner with SnapGear Inc for board support and reference designs. SnapGear Inc is always quick to provide uClinux board support for processors that do not feature memory management units. The Linux API is freely available as an industry standard and as long as GNU public license conditions are met there are generally no royalty payments. That translates to per unit savings when shipping as well as a more widespread pool of experienced application engineers to draw upon."

The next distribution of uClinux now contains full target support for the M5249C3 board. Development is likely to continue until May 2002 to round out audio support. When available code will be available from the uClinux CVS repository at http://cvs.uclinux.org

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SnapGear and SecureEdge are trademarks of SnapGear Inc. ColdFire is a trademark of Motorola. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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