embARC for a Free Ride

It’s probably the first time that Synopsys is offering such a direct access to free and open source software. The goal is to support customers developing application code for IoT and embedded devices based on ARC IP core family. The designer can select the Real Time Operating System (RTOS) which best meet the system requirements, unlike with ARC well-known competitor. Open source software also includes drivers, core services and middleware. Because the dynamic power consumption of the ARC EM processors can be as low as 3 uW/MHz, ARC IP core family is IoT preferred solution. embARC Includes commonly used components for the Internet of Things (IoT) such as MQTT and CoAP internet protocols as well as FreeRTOS and Contiki OS operating systems, helping to jump-start IoT development.

Synopsys has decided to offer a dedicated web portal (www.embarc.org) allowing ARC developers to freely download examples and documentation. This portal is also a forum for users to interact and get help from each other and even more a central repository for easy access to tools and embedded software to run on ARC EM processors. As far as I know, it’s the first time that one of the big 3 EDA/IP vendor proposes central repository capability. Central repository is a concept shared by large semi companies as well as open source software users/developers, quite often geeks considering that their work should be shared with the design community for free. This approach can help a design team starting to develop embedded software for IoT application to benefit from ready to use (open source) software functions, RTOS and drivers and greatly accelerate Time-To-Market (TTM).

embARC software can be split into middleware, libraries running on a RTOS, drivers and core services. The design team can freely download middleware like IoT comms, Networking, File System or GUI, standard toolchain and cloud libraries (C Lib, Maths Lib or Xively Lib) and select the RTOS of it choice. The benefits are multiple: cheaper development cost, faster TTM and the guarantee that the most appropriate solution will be selected to support embedded software development. Using ARC EM-based hardware development platform is a must-have to explore various design tracks, optimize and eventually validate the software.

ARC EM Starter Kit from Synopsys will help starting software development quickly, benefiting from lots of examples to get started with. This development boards includes timers, watchdog timers, UARTs, SPI, I2C, micro USB, SD Card slot, 20 pin JTAG and more. The ARC MetaWare toolkit complements this H/W offer, providing rich DSP software library and C/C++ Compiler as well as GNU tools support.

Availability and Resources
The embARC Open Software Platform is available now, at no cost at www.embarc.org.

embARC.org is a dedicated website that provides developers centralized access to free and open-source software, drivers, operating systems and middleware supporting the embARC Open Software Platform. The website also provides documentation and a forum-based community where developers can share their resources, expertise and code to help speed deployment of ARC-processor based embedded systems.

The ARC EM Starter Kit and the MetaWare Development Toolkit are also available now from the websites below:

• ARC EM Starter Kit: http://www.synopsys.com/dw/ipdir.php?ds=arc_em_starter_kit
• ARC MetaWare Development Toolkit: http://www.synopsys.com/dw/ipdir.php?ds=sw_metaware

From Eric Esteve from IPNEST