Open software platform accelerates IoT development

Device drivers, operating systems and middleware ported to and optimised for ARC processors are available for download without cost from the embARC website. The website also provides access to software development tools and documentation as well as user forums to facilitate the sharing of information and expertise among the ARC-based design community.

Pre-ported drivers for the GPIO, UART, SPI, I2C and other peripherals as well as leading RTOSs, including FreeRTOS and Contiki OS, give developers a choice of industry-standard software environments for their ARC-based systems. FreeRTOS is a scalable, compact and reliable operating system that is popular among embedded software developers. The Contiki OS is specifically designed for networked, memory-constrained systems such as low-power, wireless IoT applications.

The embARC platform provides a choice of middleware components and a robust starting point for the development of IoT-related devices. The components available for use with FreeRTOS include the TCP/IP stack lwIP, file system fatfs, and MQTT and libcoap IoT protocols. The Contiki OS includes a middleware package with an integrated IoT protocol stack including MQTT, a publish/subscribe messaging protocol for lightweight M2M communications, and the CoAP application layer protocol for resource-constrained IoT applications.

embARC.org is a dedicated website that provides developers centralised 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.

Free software development tools built on the open-source Eclipse IDE and GNU toolchain are available for use with the embARC Open Software Platform. This gives developers a flexible software environment with an IDE, compiler, debugger and utilities that are familiar to embedded developers. The embARC software is also supported by the commercially-available Synopsys ARC MetaWare Development Toolkit, giving developers the option to use a highly optimised toolchain for maximum code density and performance.

The embARC Open Software Platform has been ported to Synopsys' ARC EM Starter Kit, a low-cost software development board consisting of pre-installed FPGA images of ARC EM Processors with peripherals and a software package. The Starter Kit enables rapid software development, code porting, software debugging and profiling for the EM4, EM6, EM5D and EM7D processor cores.

“We are pleased to see that the embARC Open Software Platform supports the use of the popular open-source FreeRTOS,” said Andrew Longhurst, Business Development Manager, Wittenstein High Integrity Systems. “We offer OPENRTOS, the only commercially licensed and supported version of FreeRTOS, thus allowing designers using embARC to move to an RTOS with professional support, maintenance and updates, if needed.”

“FreeRTOS is professionally developed, supported and yet completely free for developers to embed in their commercial products without any requirement to expose their proprietary source code,” said Richard Barry, Director, Real Time Engineers Ltd. “As the leading RTOS for embedded applications, we are really pleased that Synopsys is making FreeRTOS available as part of their new embARC Platform. ARC users now have a simplified path to join the hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide who already benefit from the ease of use and proven reliability of FreeRTOS.”

“Synopsys' embARC Open Software Platform provides a comprehensive and easily accessible software development environment that leverages widely-used open source software, operating systems and middleware targeted at IoT and other embedded applications,” said John Koeter, Vice President of Marketing, IP and Prototyping, Synopsys. “embARC strengthens the ecosystem that helps software developers get their ARC-based applications to market faster with less risk and development cost.”

The embARC Open Software Platform is available now, at no cost at embARC.org. The ARC EM Starter Kit and the MetaWare Development Toolkit are also available from the Synopsys website.