Company name: Oaks Electronics Co. Ltd. Head office: 3-21 Kanda Sakuma-cho, Daiichi Chiyoda Building 3F, Chiyodaku, Tokyo 101-0025, Japan Established: October 1, 1986 Capital: 10,000,000 Yen Staff: 15 (as of September 2004) URL:http://www.oaks-ele.com/index_e.htm Kenji Yamamoto Manager Oaks ELECTRONICS CO.,LTD

Installed Option1and Option2 OAKS8-FullKit

Oaks Electronics started developing and marketing its OAKS single-board microprocessor series products, which use Renesas microprocessors, approximately four years ago. Today that product line covers a wide range of different microprocessor models and includes the OAKS8 CPU Board (R8C/Tiny), OAKS16 (M16C/60), OAKS16-MINI (M16C/Tiny), and OAKS32 (M32C/80).

According to Mr. Yamamoto, "Our product range has expanded to this extent because of feedback we have received from RSO (Renesas Solutions), who track market needs on a day-to-day basis. We have worked together developing boards that satisfy the demands of users." One result is the OAKS8-CPUBOARD, an extremely small (25mm x 25mm) circuit board that uses Renesas Electronics's latest R8C/Tiny 16-bit microprocessor, the R5F21114P.

That board is included in inexpensive the OAKS8-FullKit, along with an OAKS8-EXBOARD expansion board and a battery box for the power supply. A CD-ROM contains a variety of resources, including various manuals and documents, a compiler and debugger, and sample software. "To keep cost low, the expansion board requires some assembly and the software packages in the kit are restricted versions. Nevertheless, customers who purchase this kit get everything they need to evaluate the R8C/Tiny microcomputer," explains Mr. Yamamoto.

Optional products available with the OAKS8-FullKit include an LCD board and components for use with 7-segment displays. Because the CPU board is separate from the peripheral functions, users can configure the desired evaluation environment at minimum cost simply by combining only the necessary optional components. That makes the kit an excellent teaching tool. Other products that use this modular format include the OAKS16-FullKit and OAKS16-MINI FullKit.

"We see Oaks Electronics' mission as being to extend the baseline for microprocessor developers by supplying products with a strong educational flavor. Accordingly, we aim to price these products with only the slimmest of profit margins and to provide full support," says Mr. Yamamoto. Planned future products include application boards targeted at commercial users and basic boards with an even stronger emphasis on training aids for educational applications.

Company name: Hokuto Denshi Co., Ltd. Head office: 16-3-7 Odori Nishi, Chuo-ku, Sapporo 060-0042, Japan Established: January 1977 Incorporated: May 1979 Capital: 16,000,000 Yen Staff: 11 (as of September 2004) URL:http://www.hokutodenshi.co.jp/ Takashi Nakano Chief Executive Officer HOKUTO DENSHI CO.,LTD

SH7727 Starter Kit

The extensive, competitively priced product range encompasses boards that support almost all Renesas F-ZTAT type microprocessors. Mr. Nakano says, "When Renesas develops a new microcomputer, we always produce a board that uses that chip in order to modify our programmers to support the device. Subsequently, we release that board."

According to Mr. Nakano, Hokuto Denshi "aims for pricing that makes our customers feel pleased after purchasing our products." Instead of using the product-out concept based on costs, the company takes a market-in approach to ensure that customers can purchase easy-to-use tools at prices with which they are comfortable.

Hokuto Denshi has recently added evaluation kits and operating systems to the programmers and boards that have been its mainstay in the past, and plans to put additional effort into these products in the future. As Mr. Nakano explains, "Using reference boards for development is becoming more common, and we believe there is a requirement for evaluation kits that can help further shorten system development times."

One recently released evaluation kit that has been well received is the SH7727 Starter Kit. It comes with a GNU development system that includes the TINET TCP/IP protocol stack and TOPPERS JSP kernel. This combination has been fully tested and the system can be used both to evaluate the high-performance SH3-DSP device and to speed-up application development. An LCD unit and other options are available for applications that utilize graphics processing. The TOPPERS JSP kernel, an open-source real-time OS based on the ITRON specification, is also being ported to multimedia processing oriented chips such as the SH7616.

The development tools, boards, and other products produced by Hokuto Denshi provide full support for the Renesas SuperH, H8, and H8S microprocessor families. Additional support is planned for the M16C families and R8C series.