Virtual Peripherals are typical microcontroller peripherals implement in software. This is possible with the SX microcontroller because of its high clock speed, efficient instruction set and its simple but powerful real time clock counter interrupt. The SXC compiler simplifies the implementation of Virtual Peripherals by providing a function interface the the RTCC interrupt. Already designed and tested assembly Virtual Peripherals can be added the the RTCC interrupt function with the #asm and #endasm directives.

The call instruction of the SX microcontroller can't reach all locations in ROM. The 9th bit of the destination is always clear. This limits the call instruction to only being able to call address in the ranges of 0x000-0x0FF, 0x200-0x2FF, 0x400-0x4FF and 0x600-0x6FF. If the start of a function is located outside these ranges, the compiler must call a branch island. A branch island is a branch instruction with a destination that is a function located in a range that is inaccessible to the CALL instruction.

Yes. If you have written your program according to our recommended practices in the product documentation, upgrading should be seamless. All Byte Craft Limited Code Development Systems have backward compatibility with previous language constructs.

Please note:

• Improvements in the compiler can alter the generated code; this may impact your testing.
• Device header files may change between versions. If you've written customized device header files, they may require some revision. Simply examine the stock headers that we ship with the product.

See Distributors for an updated list of distributors.

Jens Altenberg's design for a fantastic autonomous airplane uses software generated by the SXC Code Development System. He has won third place in Parallax's SX Design Contest.

For more information, see “Sponsorship”.