Embarking as a new version, the Eclipse-based Code Composer Essentials for MSP430 MCUs provides major upgrades designed to enhance performance, emulation, and ease-of-use. Leveraging the Eclipse open-source platform, designers can integrate plug-ins for a customized, interoperable, and flexible IDE. Upgrades include optimizations and improvements for improving design flow, simplifying debugging and verification, and speeding time to market. For ease of use, dialog boxes reduce the number of steps necessary for common design tasks. The version includes comprehensive support of MSP430 MCU's on-chip capabilities such as non-intrusive code execution with real-time hardware capabilities including breakpoints and stack trace. Additionally, replacing the GDB debugger with the CCStudio Debug Server yields up to 200% faster performance for downloading applications, single-stepping, and refreshing registers and variables. Other features include updated C-code syntax, which allows users to directly import code without modification from code examples, libraries, and demos from the company and third parties. CCEssentials v3 (MSP-CCE430) is free and supports up to 16 KB of code space. CCEssentials Pro v3 (MSP-CCE430PRO) features unlimited C and assembly code space with price starting at $499 for a single seat. TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC., Dallas, TX. (800) 477-8924.