HCC-Embedded is the foremost vendor of storage and communication solutions for embedded applications. The company offers an extensive family of file systems, including failsafe, FAT, and TINY systems, as well as USB software for host and device, flash translation layers, Windows embedded connectivity and specialized IP. Products run in most environments, with most OSes or without an OS, and with most processors and peripherals. All HCC-Embedded products are licensed on a royalty-free basis and distributed in full source form.
Except for unusual circumstances, HCC-Embedded ships products that are fully ported to the user’s hardware, with sample projects that run on common development boards.
HCC-Embedded serves the entire embedded ecosystem. Its products are used in a very broad variety of applications, including automotive, avionics, consumer electronics, fleet management, industrial automation, medical apparatus, process control, telecommunications and others.
HCC-Embedded’s range of file systems is the broadest in the industry. It includes FAT12/16/32 systems for large and small environments and a high-performance, failsafe FAT12/16/32 system. In addition, two systems with proprietary file structure are available. One is a failsafe system for limited environments and the other is a high-performance, failsafe system that works with all NOR and NAND memories, and provides sophisticated bad block management and wear leveling.
HCC’s file systems run on virtually all adequate microcontrollers, with or without an RTOS.
SafeFAT SafeFAT is a high-performance, failsafe FAT12/16/32 file system. It guarantees that all operations will be carried out in a failsafe manner. If the system resets unexpectedly for any reason, it returns in a coherent, consistent and usable state. Various drivers for commonly used memory devices such as SD cards, multi-media card and compact flash cards are included in the standard SafeFAT package.
SafeFAT, when used with HCC-Embedded’s
SafeFTL flash translation layer, is used to access NAND flash memories. Since SafeFTL is itself failsafe, and since it also performs bad block management and wear leveling, the combination of SafeFAT and SafeFTL provides a highly reliable system.
FATFAT is a high-performance FAT12/16/32 file system. It is identical to SafeFAT, except for the failsafe feature. As with SafeFAT, various drivers for commonly used memory devices such as SD cards, multi-media card and compact flash cards are included in the standard FAT package.
FAT can be used with SafeFTL in order to access NAND flash.
THINTHIN is a highly optimized, reduced-footprint version of HCC’s highly successful FAT system. This DOS compatible file system is designed for configurations with limited resources. It works well with the 8051, MSP430, PIC18, PIC24 and H8S series MCUs and is suitable for use with most 8-bit and 16-bit CPUs.
SafeFLASH
SafeFLASH is a high-performance flash file system that can be used with all types of NAND and NOR memories, including DataFlash. SafeFLASH is failsafe; this means that it will recover from an unexpected interruption without corrupting the files. In addition, SafeFLASH performs bad block management and both static and dynamic wear leveling. Since it handles both the high-level fail safety aspects as well as the flash maintenance, SafeFLASH can be the basis of a highly reliable system.
TINY TINY is designed for limited environments. It is especially useful when codespace and RAM are tight. Although TINY is a small system, it carries a big wallop. It’s failsafe and it performs dynamic wear leveling. TINY is generally used with flash that has small sectors – 4K or less. Special versions of TINY are available for Atmel DataFlash and MSP430 internal flash, among others.
SafeFTL SafeFTL is a standard flash translation layer that allows an array of NAND flash to be addressed as a set of standard 512Byte, 2K or 4K logical sectors.
DFMLAtmel DataFlash is the world’s leading serial flash memory family. It contains a number of features that make it an excellent partner for embedded applications in general and for HCC’s file system solutions in particular.
HCC's DFML is designed to be a clean interface layer between a file system and DataFlash devices. It provides a substantial set of features.
HCC’s USB stacks and class drivers run on virtually all adequate microcontrollers, with or without an RTOS.
USB Device StackThe EUSBD™ (Embedded USB) device stack has been designed by HCC’s embedded system engineers to provide the most efficient USB device solutions. EUSBD-BS (the EUSB Base System) provides a USB device stack for end-point control. The stack supports all four USB transfer types:
- Control
- Interrupt
- Bulk
- Isochronous
EUSBD is available for a very large number of microcontrollers and standalone USB controllers, from most major manufacturers. Numerous class drivers are available for use with EUSBD. Among these are mass storage, CDC, HID, MIDI, RFI, RNDIS and others.
USB Host StackHCC's EUSBH™ (Embedded USB Host Stack) is a full-featured host stack designed for embedded applications. Its key features are:
- Compliance with USB 1.1 and 2.0
- Control, bulk, interrupt and isochronous transfers
- Low-speed 1.5 Mb/s, full-speed 12Mb/s and high-speed 480 Mb/s
- Support for OHCI, EHCI and non-standard host controllers
- Contains integrated root hub and port manager
- Range of class drivers
- Small footprint (<16K) and data requirement (<10K)
- Designed for any RTOS
EUSBH is available for a very large number of microcontrollers and standalone USB controllers, from most major manufacturers. Numerous class drivers are available for use with EUSBH, including Hub, HID, mass storage, CDC, audio and printer.
There are many issues to consider when designing bootloaders for embedded systems.
- How to ensure that the bootloader is never overwritten
- How to ensure that the programmed image is valid
- How to insure that the application is independent of the bootloader
- How to integrate with a target development environment
The basic mode of operation of all HCC bootloaders is to create a highly optimized, small footprint bootstub that resides permanently on the target system. This bootstub is designed never to be erased. It includes the system interrupt table. When the bootloader is not active, interrupts are redirected to a fixed point in the user’s application. The developer is free to select the method by which the system decides to run the bootloader.
Actual implementation may vary depending on the target. In certain cases these bootloaders may be secondary bootloaders, as when the target microcontroller supports DFU, for example.
HCC-Embedded offers the following bootloaders:
Fat Bootloader
BL-FAT is a special version of HCC's already optimized small-footprint FAT file system. It is designed to be used as a simple bootloader.
USB Device Bootloader
BL-EUSBD-XXX is a bootstub that is used to configure a bootloader that loads a new code image from a host application over a USB connection. It uses a special version of HCC's EUSBD stack and a simple transfer protocol to minimize overhead.
USB Host BootloaderBL-EUSBH-XXX is a standalone bootstub that can read a new code image from any USB pen drive, and use it to update your target device’s firmware safely. The Bootstub contains a special, read-only version of HCC's already optimized small-footprint FAT file system, together with HCC’s EUSBH-MS and any EUSBH stack.
Serial BootloadersBL-SERIAL-XXX is a bootloader for use with a serial link.
BL-SERIAL-XXX is available for most MSP430 devices. The system consists of a simple protocol to be used over the serial link, together with the appropriate flash programming algorithms.
USB RFIRFI (Reliable File Interface) is provided as an alternative to USB mass storage under Windows.
RFI provides a more NFS-like access to the embedded system, so that the embedded system always remains in control of the storage media. Access on the embedded side is through a standard API, so the PC over USB appears simply as another task accessing the file system on the target. In this way any combination of file system types can be used on the embedded target.
USB Embedded PipeHCC’s Embedded Pipe for USB takes the pain out of interfacing a USB device with a host application.
HCC has a wealth of design and development experience in the embedded systems field. Our product development know-how is particularly broad and deep in the file storage and communication domains. Our experience and skills are available to our customers through HCC’s services group, which can help to accelerate product development and thus reduce associated costs and time-to-market.
Release of File System and USB Product Ranges for Atmel SAM9G45 MicrocontrollersRelease of USB Product Range for TI C6000/OMAP MicroprocessorsRelease of USB Device Stack for TI MSP430 MicrocontrollersHCC-Embedded Appoints Gyorgy Gati as Test and Quality ManagerRelease of File System and USB Product Ranges for Atmel AVR32 MicrocontrollersRelease of File System and USB Product Ranges for Texas Instruments Stellaris™ Microcontrollers
Release of File System and USB Product Ranges for Atmel SAM3U MicrocontrollersRelease of USB Media Transfer Protocol Driver for Embedded Devices
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