Dear customers of ImageCraft,
After starting to regain ground in 2010-2011, the Semiconductor sector seems to have stalled again in 2012. Nevertheless, some of our customers are now telling us that their clients are asking them to resume work on products that have not been touched in the last 5 years, so I do see that as a sign that recovery is happening. Lets hope 2013 is a more positive year for all.
ImageCraft’s big news is the release of our ARM Cortex-M and the integrated debugger. Our V8 IDE now has all the major features you would expect from a modern IDE. This puts us in a good position for 2013.
In 2013, our focus will be on increased ease of use, and broadening our middleware offerings.
In terms of ease of use and new features for the AVR compiler, we will be releasing CRC, production elf file generation for the AVR compiler in Jan 2013, and in H1 2013 we plan to release function inlining, and revamped 64-bit double support, plus 64-bit long long.
The Cortex compiler will be getting function inlining and 64-bit double support.
There is still potential in the CPU12 market. Unfortunately, due to lack of resources and the low Return of Investment on the XGATE improvements we made to the CPU12 compilers, until we see that potential grow, it’s unlikely that we will work on the CPU12 compiler in the immediate future.
As for middleware, the key market is clearly the Cortex-M. We have some ideas that we will be working on in H1 2013 that could potentially open up the market for us.
Lastly, we decided to change the AVR compiler editions and pricing to match those of the Cortex-M compiler: the compiler now comes in STD ($249) and PRO ($499). Most of the new features will only be made for the PRO edition. Existing ADV users are still supported as before with no change, but of course upgrading to PRO edition is encouraged.
As always, we wish you the best new year, and if you have comments and suggestions, please feel free to email us.
Happy 2013.