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As an ARM licensee and competitor, Atmel, however, put substance behind 'coopetition,' announcing its AVR®32 AP7000 family of high-performance 32-bit digital signal controllers. AVR®32 targets many of the same multimedia, communications, and consumer applications as ARM. And, as compared with multi-core architectures like ARM/TI OMAP, AVR®32 has a single processor tool flow. Its Instruction Set Architecture (ISA) is specifically designed for high-level programming languages like C, C++ and Java. Release here.

On the low power front, Atmel wowed the attendees with its new picoPower™ AVR MCUs. The picoPower technology reduces "power-save" power consumption to as little as 650 nA. Check it out here. Another interesting low power announcement came from board vendor VersaLogic - their ''Cheetah'' board has sophisticated sleep/wake-up features that make it ideal for medical, industrial, or security applications that require low power. The company also remains a leader in RoHS compliance.

Micro Digital, for example, made a rare show appearance and announced SMX.Blaze™. Now available for ARM, ColdFire, and x86 processors, the product targets network connectivity with its smxNS a compact TCP/IP stack as well as standard low-level protocols (ARP, etc) and DHCP, FTP, Telnet, and BOOTP. Green Hills announced a new µ-velOSity RTOS.

Express Logic announced ThreadX Version 5.0. The company sees this as a major 'dot zero' release soon to be followed by new versions of their NetX™ TCP/IP network stack, FileX™ file system, and USBX™ USB stack. Release here.

Quadros drew attention to the SDIO standard, which has become the de facto standard in adding plug-and-play accessories to portable consumer devices. The partnership announcement stakes their claim as a leader in this emerging standard, here.

Digi's Rabbit Semiconductor division announced a new Internet program by which designers can design boards 'on the fly' at RabbitFlex™.

SBS Technologies connected GPS to telecommunications with their announcement of a GPS Clock AdvancedMC Module, here. The point, explained company spokespeople, is that many WiMAX base stations do not have physical access to the telecom network clocks that allow device synchronization. Besides positioning, GPS allows time synchronization. The company also announced its first PowerPC-based AdvancedMC board, here.

WinSystems continued its forray into embedded memory by announcing its RoHS-compatible CompactFlash cards, here. WinSystems' CompactFlash parts are targeted for applications that need industrial-grade reliability, industry-standard compatibility, and IDE hard disk drive emulation for program and data storage. Competitor and partner msystems™ also announced upgraded 'industrial grade' flash, here.