The Freescale Tower System has won the 21st Annual EDN Innovation Award in the “Development Kits, Reference Designs, and Single-Board Computers” category.
The Freescale Tower System is a development platform that enables users to test-drive embedded products and prototype their custom embedded system design. What sets the Freescale Tower System apart is its innovative modular design and low-cost implementation.
The EDN Innovation Awards honor the most innovative technological advancements and unique, state-of-the-art electronics products. When announcing Freescale as the winner, Suzanne Deffree, managing editor for EDN's news desk, had this to say:
"Tonight's winner is a company whose history with development kits stretches back into the dark ages of ICs. This winner has combined very powerful processing, flexible I/O configurations, and a rather whimsical mechanical assembly into a kit that is instructive, useful as a real prototype, and just plain fun."
The EDN Innovation Awards carry special meaning in the electronics design community because the winners are chosen by a jury of their peers. EDN accepts nominations from the industry via its Web site, EDN.com. EDN's technical editors select the most deserving nominees as finalists. Then a combination of audience votes and balloting by EDN's editorial staff determine the ultimate winners.
The Freescale Tower System gives engineers hardware and software tools that let them test-drive embedded products and prototype their embedded-system designs. The modular design and low cost makes it easy for engineers to quickly mix and match the modules they need rather than settle for an all-in-one dev kit that lacks a key I/O port or peripheral they need. Freescale makes the Tower mechanical specifications, pinout standards, and design source files (OrCAD schematics, Allegro layouts, fabrication drawings, and so on) freely available online, so engineers can easily design custom modules or add modules to the commercial Tower System portfolio.
More information on the Freescale Tower System here.
