Process control units are oriented to OEMs

Process control units are oriented to OEMs A series of microprocessor systems for OEMs building up industrialcontrol systems have been launched by UK firm Stonefield. The basic Admiral system comprises a doubleEuro-height crate containing the master processing card, power supply and slots for up to 11 other interface cards. Extension crates are added with connections via buffering cables. The whole system mounts onto a 19 in rack. The main processor card in the crate has serial lines for program editing and for use in realtime mode to a VDU or printer. A card with two separate serial lines responding to RS232 is available. LED indicators are provided on the 16-way digital I/O cards; these give the status of field inputs and control system outputs. One slot in the crate is reserved for an editor with a battery-backed RAM. When a program is proved the PROM blaster in the editor is used to blast the program into PROM. Admiral comes with its own multitasking industrial-control language MICRO-VERA. This language includes

Industrial data displayed by Admiral 318

Semicustom-circuit designer s/ware Software for designing semicustom logic arrays and standard cells has been released by Texas Instruments. The package, entitled the Transportable Design Utility (TDU), runs on the TI Professional Computer. It allows the designer to generate a database for his/her semicustom circuit, either by schematic creation or via direct text entry of the hardware description language for the logic diagram. Test patterns for the circuit can be generated using the test description language which is either entered and verified or automatically generated. TDU also performs testability analysis, simulates a design by subjecting the model to a predefined maths routines, industrial commands, digital input checking, reading analogues and communication to serial ports. Up to 32 discrete tasks can be performed simultaneously, says Stonefield. (Stonefield, Lawson-

Hunt Industrial Part, Guildford Road, Broadbfldge Heath, Horsham, West Sussex RH12 3JR, UK. Tel: (0403) 5•366) []

test pattern, and carries out electrical rule checking (eg timing race conditions and worst-case delay times). The price of the package in the UK is £475. (Texas Instruments Ltd,

Manton Lane, Bedford MK41 7PA, UK. UK distributor: BA Electronics Ltd, Hitchin Road, Arlesey, Beds SG15 6SG, UK. Tek (0462) 834744) []

TurboChip models VLSI Hardware for modelling VLSI devices and printed circuit boards has been announced by UK company Tektronix CAE Systems. The CAE 2000/TurboChip system simulates parts (eg microprocessors) without the need to build software models. It is intended to thereby cut simulation runtimes and reduce circuit development times. Moreover, after a chip has been manufactured, it can be checked against the original simulation to ensure that what was built was exactly what was designed. CAE 2000/TurboChip can be used with Sun and Apollo workstations and DEC VAX superminis. The basic board set consists of two boards. The master holds control and pattern memory. The slave has the device to be modelled. Also included are drivers and sensors. The user configures the system with respect to the number of devices per slave board and the number of master and/or slave boards per system. Slave boards can be grouped to meet the pin count needs of custom VLSI or printed circuit boards. The basic pattern memory is 64 kbyte. This is expandable both depthwise and widthwise. It is software configurable to suit depth/ width requirements, eg 8k x 64 and 16k x 32. (Tektronix CAE Systems Ltd, Fourth Avenue, Globe Park, Marlow,

Bucks SL7 1YD, UK. Tel: (06284) 6000) []

microprocessors and microsystems