Product Reference Designs, Software Development Platforms and Evaluation Modules are various tools that help product developers leverage the capabilities of leading processors and SoCs, enabling them to quickly bring out embedded products and gadgets for a wide range of applications. These Product Reference Designs and Software Development Platforms are intended to accelerate the software development for any product. In the current day scenario, where competition is increasing and design cycles are tight and designers are busier than ever, these product development platforms and product reference designs help developers jumpstart their product development and accelerate time to market.

Product Reference Designs

Mistral offers a wide range of easy-to-use, scalable and award winning Product Development Platforms, Reference Designs and Evaluation Kits (EVMs) based on leading System on Chips (SoC). These development platforms and reference designs (including TI Reference Designs) help product developers prototype and test their software and applications well before their custom product hardware is ready. Our powerful and accessible product reference designs and software development platforms offer the ideal tool to create, collaborate, and deliver your end product or solutions. Mistral’s Software Development Platforms and Evaluation Modules have a scalable and modular architecture, and include pre-built binaries for popular operating systems and frameworks, providing design and development engineers with a flexible platform for building their embedded gadgets and products. Mistral’s software development platforms and product reference designs support in the development of next generation products using latest technologies.

These software development platforms, industrial development kits (IDKs) and product reference designs act as a proof of concept and are usually targeted for specific applications. Our TI Reference Designs and other Product Reference Designs enable faster time to market thereby cutting costs and reducing risk in customer’s product integration. Mistral has also designed and developed several custom Software Development Platforms and Product Reference Designs to help customers address various system-level application challenges like mixed signal designs, power management, etc. along with the necessary software drivers and board support packages.

Most of our Product Reference Designs come with standard Application Programming Interfaces for Android, Yocto Linux, Debian and other Linux variants. Our software development platforms enable developers to build highly differentiated, feature-rich wireless and multimedia devices for the market, not only at comparatively low cost but also at considerably reduced time-to-market. In addition, as part of our semiconductor support services, we also help silicon companies bring out Software Development Platforms (SDPs), Product Reference Designs and Evaluation Kits for their upcoming SoCs.

TI Reference Designs

Over the years, Mistral has designed and developed Product Reference Designs and embedded development platforms for Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, NVIDIA and many other silicon vendors. Mistral is an Active Member of the TI design Network and offers a range of Software Development Platforms and TI Reference designs that leverage the TI architecture to address your product design challenges. Some of the TI Reference Designs and evaluation modules have been adopted by leading product developers and have also won several awards and accolades over the years. These include the TI Reference Designs TMDXEVM8148 and AM/DM37x EVM. The TMDXEVM8148 a software development platforms based on TI’s DM8148 SoC was shortlisted for the prestigious UBM ACE Awards 2012 in the “Development kit, Reference design and SBC” category.

Another one of Mistral designed development platform, CraneBoard, low-cost, open-source software development platforms based on AM3517 SoC from TI was also voted among the ‘EDN Hot 100 products’ in 2011. Our latest addition to the TI Reference Designs are the mmWave based RADAR modules based on TI’s IWR and AWR chipsets for Industrial and Automotive applications. Our growing list of TI Reference Designs, Evaluation Modules and Software Development Platforms are based on the latest ARM®, digital signal processors (DSPs) and mmWave RADAR modules from Texas Instruments. In addition, Mistral also offers Product Reference Designs based on latest SOCs from leading semiconductor companies like Renesas, NXP, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Cypress, Analog Devices, etc. Mistral also offers specialized silicon bring-up services, silicon validation services and design of software development platforms that help silicon companies test and bring-out new/upcoming silicon in the shortest time frame possible with lowest cost.

Read an interesting Blog on Product Reference Designs & Software Development Platforms titled  “Development Platforms – Why we need them?”