November 5, 2001 - National Semiconductor (NYSE:NSM) today announced the launch of WEBENCH? 3.0, extending the industry's most powerful suite of online design and prototyping tools for power supply and wireless phase-locked loop (PLL) and loop filter designs. And now, National is introducing the semiconductor industry's first online simulator for flash microcontrollers.
"The WEBENCH power environment turned out to be so easy. I designed, simulated, and received my board kit the next day. I soldered it together using the assembly diagram and it worked! With just a few clicks, I saved weeks of development and prototyping time," said Greg Caso, vice president, Escape Communications.
In an example of just one of the tools, customers used National's WEBENCH to create 41,000 power supply designs in the last year, and saved an average of 43 man-hours per design. The estimated total cost savings to National customers was over $82 million.
"WEBENCH is currently generating $1.5 to 2 million dollars worth of design wins per month for National. These tools save our customers time," said Phil Gibson, National's vice president of Web Business and Sales Automation.
WEBENCH 3.0 (WEBENCH.NATIONAL.COM) is a free interactive online workbench that accelerates designs through selection, electrical simulation, virtual physical layout, and thermal simulation. WEBENCH also integrates supply chain partners to deliver custom prototype kits overnight or fully assembled and tested custom prototypes in five days. For tight deadlines, an engineer needs only one to two hours using WEBENCH to specify a design, analyze and customize it until it is optimal, and order chips, boards, software, or completed custom prototype boards for delivery to the US overnight. Worldwide delivery is available in 48 hours.
"Fast access to all the parts you need in one place is a real time saver," said Kent Hardage, Engineering Program Manager, Agilent Corporation. "One online credit card transaction is much faster and easier than tracking down vendors and creating a PO for each one."
Designs are saved on National's servers in secure accounts so they can be reviewed and changed at any time by the designer. Each design features custom presentation quality documentation and any design change or adjustment throughout the process automatically ripples back and updates the documentation. After optimization, engineers can share designs with their peers, management, purchasing, or customers for review, updating, or approval.
"The one thing engineers hate is spending time on documentation," said Gibson. "They don't like to accumulate all the material needed for the vendor selection and hand-off to production and manufacturing. The self-generating bill of materials, schematics and layouts, simulations, specifications, and assembly documents on WEBENCH are a designer's dream."
WEBENCH 2.0 was released one year ago. With WEBENCH 3.0, all of the previous online design tools have been significantly extended. In WEBENCH 3.0, WebSIM? from Transim Corporation and WebTHERM? from Flomerics Ltd. now deliver customized power supply designs up to 185 watts using heat sinks or surface mount designs with variable copper for thermal management. EasyPLL, from National, now offers simulation and customization of reference designs for the 1.8-GHz GSM and 2.4-GHz ISM wireless standards. It creates and delivers complete simulation of RF and Aux frequency PLL & loop filter designs from concept to your door in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods.
"WEBENCH 3.0 lets engineers accelerate the design process for new products while producing the best possible design," said Gibson. "We are now opening the industry's first online design site for flash microcontrollers through a relationship with UNIS, Ltd. of Czech Republic. We expect this new environment to extend our leadership in fast development even further."
National's new WEBENCH for microcontrollers provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for selecting the best controller and visually configuring on-chip peripherals, registers, and interrupts while an automatic design check highlights potential design conflicts with interactive color warnings. WEBENCH maintains a significant library of pre-configured Embedded Beans? for each of its peripheral/controller core combinations so the designer can create fully functional code with minimal knowledge of the underlying controller complexity. Design is further accelerated by several other key WEBENCH innovations for flash microcontrollers:
- WEBENCH auto-generates code for each peripheral driver through the Graphical Integrated Development Environment (GIDE), and validates the design
- The Classic Integrated Development Environment (CIDE) simplifies code integration and feeds directly to the simulator for customizing application requirements
- The Simulator (SIM) is a complete Internet based code emulation tool offering single steps, break points, and register maps
- And finally, a hex file generator and download tool delivers the code across the internet to a physical target board of the designer's choice
National's website, www.national.com is recognized throughout the semiconductor industry as a trendsetter and home to innovation. Half of the world's design engineers-more than 500,000 unique visitors-use the site at least once a month. The site features seven sophisticated search engines and offers information in 10 languages. More than 20,000 data sheets are downloaded daily and samples are available world wide in 24 hours.
About National Semiconductor
National Semiconductor is the premier analog company driving the information age. Combining real-world analog and state-of-the-art digital technology, the company is focused on the fast growing markets for wireless handsets; information appliances; information infrastructure; and display, imaging and human interface technologies. With headquarters in Santa Clara, California, National reported sales of $2.1 billion for fiscal year 2001 and employs about 9,700 people worldwide. Additional company and product information is available on the World Wide Web at www.national.com.
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