April 1st 2009 - Freescale Romania celebrates nine years of successes
“We determine the success of our global customers by delivering world-class software and services for Freescale platforms.”
April 2000 marked the beginning of what would later become one of the most successful technology stories in Romania. Back then, Freescale center in Romania employed only five people. Today, we are proud to be quoted, after only nine years, as a Software Center of Excellence which employs more than 200 highly skilled engineers who work on cutting-edge technologies and projects, consolidating Freescale Romania as a key development center.
Freescale Romania employs more than 200 people.
Freescale Romania in 2009
One of the largest software design centers in Freescale
One of the major software companies — 9th place in Bucharest 2008 (Romanian Chamber of Commerce and Industries)
Groups represented: Networking & Multimedia Group, Enablement Tools R&D Organization, Wireless Connectivity Operation, Microcontroller Solution Group.
The Networking & Multimedia Group team in Romania contributes to business success in programmable processing and connectivity solutions for the converging networking, communications and pervasive computing markets through four software engineering teams that accompany the entire product development cycle from validation of hardware design (processors and boards) through board support packages, optimized software components, and customer-ready software applications.
- The Network Communication Software Applications Team has the mission to provide high quality embedded networking solutions for last generation PowerQuicc communication processors. Software solutions include microcode, drivers, demo applications and benchmarking on bare board and Linux OS with strong requirement for cross-platform coding.
- The Packet Telephony Software Applications Team has the mission to provide DSP Based Software Solutions in the areas of Voice & Tone Processing, Video processing and data transmission. Software solutions include complete voice and video media gateway solutions based drivers, real-time operating systems, protocol stacks, and software components processing voice, tones, modems and fax.
- The SoC Validation Team has the mission to develop tools that verify and characterize the functionality and the performance of Freescale system-on-a-chip (SoC) solutions including high-end DSP and QorIQ, as well as PowerQuicc processors. The software tools developed automatically control the testing and characterization equipment, validate functionality and performance of various processor blocks and accelerators. The team contributes with DFD (Design-for-Debug) ideas for the definition of the future SoC's, participates to the verification of the new IP's starting from the pre-silicon phase, and actively involves in the bring-up and validation campaigns of the new processors.
- The QorIQ System Test Team is developing customer-ready application software samples targeted for high-end QorIQ processor family. The software is used for both software/hardware validation and acceleration of customer development cycle, helping QorIQ developers to migrate their applications in a multi-core, accelerator-rich programming environment.
Freescale Semiconductor's Enablement Tools R&D Organization helps customers experience and fully leverage the performance of Freescale products. The primary product offering is the award-winning CodeWarrior™ Development Studio, a complete Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that provides a highly visual and automated framework to accelerate the development of the most complex embedded applications. CodeWarrior™ Development Studio is consistent across all supported workstations and personal computers within an organization. Being built on Eclipse software development platform, its features and usage remains identical across the supported platforms. The team in Romania has brought major contributions on many areas such as:
- Compiler and Build Tools: highly optimized code generation for Freescale platforms; generally regarded as "MHz boosters" for the ability to improve the overall platform performance
- Debuggers: used as an "inspection window", providing full control and visibility within the target; critical for complex silicon validation, software bring-up and development on new silicon, as well as multicore environments
- Performance Analysis and Profiling: measure and analyze the behavior of programs at run time, identify bottlenecks and further enhance the performance of the system
- Simulators: enabling pre-silicon development and validation of the real model, detailed application tracing during execution
- Initialization and Configuration Technology: visually configure cores, peripherals, device drivers to accelerate time to market
- Real-time OS Development: high performance kernel optimized for DSP, compelling collection of drivers exposing platform capabilities, in-depth system visualization
- Product Engineering: put together all the components and delivers the product in the shape that customers will see it
Freescale Semiconductor's Wireless Connectivity Operation (WCO) Romania group provides the software part of Freescale ZigBee/802.15.4 platform: from low-level components (start-up code and drivers for ARM7 and HC08), the data link layer, various networking layers, up to sample applications and deployment solutions. The solution includes RF ICs, MCUs, protocol stack software, sample application and development tools. Engineers in WCO Romania team are building high quality competencies in: Wireless Networking Protocols (802.15.4, ZigBee, RF4CE), implemented using C on ARM7 and HCS08; Board Support Package development: startup code, low-level drivers, platform components, developed using C on ARM7 and HCS08; Automated Test Cases development, execution and implementation using Python; PC Application development using C, C++ and C#.
The Microcontroller Solution Group (MSG) in Romania is developing the basic software for the advanced automotive electronic devices powered by the 32bit Power Architecture™. The basic software functionality is standardized by the Automotive Open System Architecture organization and it's incorporated in all programmable Electronic Units (EU) which are part of any modern car system. The MSG software engineers are highly skilled on embedded software development for different application areas (like: communication, MCU control or I/O drivers), hardware & software integration, or pre-silicon software development and validation.
The MSG software team is following automotive software process specific requirements defined by the Software Process Improvement for Capability dEtermination standard (SPICE) and the software products will be certified for safety application.
All these successes wouldn't have been possible without the talent, dedication and loyalty of these brilliant engineers that form Freescale Romania.
Happy Birthday Freescale Romania!
June 1st 2009 - Freescale Junior Day
This year, we continued a well-known tradition within the company and celebrated June 1st – the Child's Day on Freescale premises. We all gathered together on the Sunday before this day, for a special reason - the drawing contest organized in the parking space. All children gladly engaged themselves and their parents in drawing their beloved cartoon character. They all have been rewarded for their efforts with a funny diploma to remember this shinny day.
As every year, children and parents, they all enjoyed the funny balloon animals and flowers that Clown and Cinderella made for them, the funny songs and the dancing and, of course, face-painting – one of the most attractive part of the day.
This time we had, as almost each time, new comers, young born that didn't quite understood what happened there, but still had a good time.
HAPPY JUNE 1ST!
What's Inside a Mobile device? - The Visit of Lauder-Reut High School 5th Grade
Did you know that...
This was the first opportunity for a group of children to realize that the products branded Nokia, BMW, Cisco, GM, Dacia Logan, Sony etc. are powered by Freescale integrated circuits.
After successful Open Days organized for students from Electronics or Computer Science, Freescale answered the request received from Lauder-Reut High School to have the fifth grade class visiting Freescale.
The hosts first started by trying to enter our little visitor's game. It was quite easy because they had a lot of gadgets (cool cell phones, PSPs, iPods etc.) that they like to play with. Freescalers like to do that too. Then, the discussion moved on how those gadgets are powered, what's inside their fancy cell phones and especially what exactly is made by Freescale. They found out that 70% of their calls are routed through network equipment powered by our company, and that our technology is around everyone – at home, in car, when walking, everywhere.
They saw how a phone platform looks in the engineering laboratory when the hardware tests started: a big board connected to measurement instruments, with a lot of wires attached. The boards became smaller and smaller, finally getting to the shape of a phone, when the platform development and validation is close to the phone launch.
The children loved to use the scopes, logic analyzes, spectrum analyzers to see how the electrical signals look and how changing some parameters in the testing SW can change the signals shape and the phone behavior.
It was not difficult for the children to realize that parts of a cellular platform are similar to what's inside a computer: processor, memory, storage systems.
After some girls painted abstract draws on the whiteboard and signed-off their picture, the funniest part of the visit was about to come: the raffle. Although the children have trendy devices, after all that they saw they were very interested to win something Freescale branded. Consequentially, in order to allow them to participate at the raffle we wanted to exploit a little their imagination: we asked them how the cell phones should look like in 2015. Funny answers and challenging for marketing and engineers:
“I would like a phone that could change color or shape and has a touch screen and cool tools or torch or mini map” (Catrina); “I would like to have a laser keyboards and to accept any Playstation, Wii and Xbox games” (Tommy); “To be controlled by voice and to show holograms” (Leor); “To send messages by flying and then come back” (Andrei); “Be able to talk only with a chip in your ear” (Christian); “Be a pen... more special” (Didi); “to have all the colors and to change the color by your feelings” (Viky); “I would like to have voice applications” (Rache); “to have touch screen and be smaller and to have the possibility to take every games, movies, photos you want for free” (Robin); “To be able to teleport, give you food, see in future, make you invisible” (Vladimir); “To be like a small computer, color change” (Nady); “I want them to have two cameras that face different directions and a full keyboard and a touch screen” (Boda); “I want that a cell phone to be connected to everything like a computer and to have vocal commands” (Andrei)
It was quite a challenging day for us. How can you make attractive for children topics like we've discussed in a very technical argot using a lot of acronyms? How can you speak their language when you talk about ICs, baseband, power management RF, digital and analog signal etc.? However, considering the feedback gathered from their parents and from their teachers, we found out that they really learned interesting things and remained with nice memories about the ambiance they found here.
Rich Beyer – Freescale CEO, visited Romania in May 2009
Rich Beyer, Freescale Chairman of the Board and CEO, and Steve Wainwright, General Manager EMEA, visited Romania in May 2009. During this visit, they had the opportunity to found out more about Freescale Romania technical capabilities and projects, but also about the innovative technical solutions and opportunities. Rich particularly liked the demonstrations of the technical capabilities and was impressed by Romanian engineers' enthusiasm and innovative spirit.
At the end of the visit, they had been interviewed by "Ziarul Financiar", together with Adrian Purcarea, Freescale Romania Director.
Rich stated during the interview that the importance of the center in Romania has grown a lot lately because of Freescale clients owning plants in Romania, such as Continental or Dacia/Renault suppliers.
"We've received a lot of orders for products developed in Romania," added Steve Wainwright.
Rich also explained for ZF that the company won a very large contract two months ago, after a presentation by the Romanian employees. "Without that impact, the client, considering a solution of our rivals, told us we would have stood no chance. At the same time, last week we won a contract worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with the Romanian team having played an important role this time, too".
