IAR Systems announced a new 32-bit kit for STMicroelectronics' first ARM Cortex-M4 based microcontroller series--STM32 F4. IAR KickStart Kit for STM32F407ZG includes an evaluation board featuring an STM32F407ZG microcontroller, an IAR J-Link Lite debug probe for ST's Cortex-M devices providing JTAG and SWD connections to the board, and a CD with software tools, example projects, and board support packages for different RTOSes. The STM32 F4 series is the highest-performance ARM Cortex-M processor-based microcontroller range in the market. It is optimal for low-power applications. IAR Embedded Workbench offers a powerful tool suite for energy saving systems, which makes it a perfect match for the low-power STM32 F4 family.

A research group from RIKEN and Fujitsu announced that research results obtained using the "K computer" were awarded the ACM Gordon Bell Prize in the Peak-Performance category for execution performance at SC11, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis taking place in Seattle, USA, on November 17 (US Pacific Standard Time). The award-winning results, presented at SC11, calculated the electron states of silicon nanowires, which have attracted attention as a core material for next-generation semiconductors. To verify the computational performance of the K computer, quantum-mechanical computations were performed on the electron states of a nanowire with approximately 100,000 atoms (20 nanometers in diameter and 6 nanometers long), close to the actual size of the materials, and…