Freescale Semiconductor (FSL) is conducting an online training program in China designed to familiarize design engineers and electrical engineering students with the company's microcontroller and digital signal controller technologies and architectures.

The goal of the training program is to expose more design engineers in China to Freescale flagship MCU/DSC products so they can experience first-hand the ease of design and smooth migration offered by Freescale's Controller Continuum.

Introduced in the first quarter of 2006, Freescale's Controller Continuum for consumer and industrial applications features an 8- to 32-bit roadmap with pin-compatible devices designed to share common peripherals and development tools. The RS08KA family of 8-bit microcontrollers provides an ultra-low-end entry point into the Controller Continuum, while the recently announced V1 ColdFire core is the first step toward pin-for-pin compatibility between 8-bit and 32-bit MCUs.

"Embedded control systems are pervasive throughout our lives, often serving as unseen interfaces that provide intelligence and connectivity for countless consumer electronic and industrial control devices," said Allen Kwan, director of Asia-Pacific marketing for Freescale's Transportation and Standard Products Group. "We've designed our microcontroller training program to help designers become more familiar with our MCU offerings and to apply them in their next embedded system designs."

Freescale began business in China in 1992 at its Tianjin site, which today is home to an assembly and test manufacturing operation that ships more than nine million microcontroller, mixed-signal and radio frequency devices per week. In addition to its manufacturing site, Freescale has four research centers located in Beijing, Suzhou, Tianjin and Shanghai and four sales offices in China, employing a total of 3,800 people.

Freescale's presence in China includes strong collaboration with China's Ministry of Information Industries and its standard-setting bodies, relationships with more than 25 leading Chinese universities and strong customer relationships.