Renesas Offers Free Evaluation Kit For High-Performance MCU

For a limited time you can get the Renesas RX610 Stick Renesas Demo Kit (RDK) for free. Register to become eligible for the RX-Stick and you will also be registered for the RX62N RDK to be released later this year.
The RX610 Stick includes some unique features like a 14x10 LED array, a slide volume potentiometer, and a 4-direction joystick.  It has an on-board debugger and you can download demo projects for audio, DSP, FPU, and benchmarking. Renesas has also created the RenasasRulz.com online community with a developer's forum and more information about  the RX610 Stick.  You can see the kit in action in the RX-Stick Demo Youtube Video below.



The RX600 series is at the high-end of the RX family which is the successor to the H8SX, R32C and 32-bit Renesas MCUs.

Storage Start-up Promises Revolutionary Hard Drive

DataSlide is publishing 160,000 IOPS and 500MB/s transfer rates for its new Hard Rectangular Drive technology. The technology has been proven in prototypes according to an article in the Register. ZDNet gives a few more details and mentions a similarity to IBM's Millipede project.

DataSlide is also promoting this as green tech when comparing IOPS/Watt to other drive technologies.

New Embedded Processor Benchmark

CoreMark is a new free benchmark for embedded processors from EEMBC. EEMBC is using this to promote its other benchmarks and to compete with free benchmarks like Dhrystone.