How to start developing with the Cortex-M

9th August 2012

ARM Ltd

ES Admin

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The popularity of the Cortex-M series processors means there is a wide range of developer resources available from a growing number of silicon and tools vendors, to help initial development. One of the easiest ways to begin developing with a Cortex-M series processor-based microcontroller is to get a starter kit and use the examples provided in the kit.

There are many starter kits available, including a number of kits that are under US$30. To program a Cortex-M processor-based microcontroller and debug the application, a USB debug adaptor to convert USB communication to Serial Wire (a 2-pin debug protocol) or JTAG (a 4 or 5 pin debug protocol) is needed. Many of these development kits already included a USB debug adaptor on board and in some cases the development board itself can be used as a USB debug adaptor for another board. This further reduces the cost of learning Cortex-M processor-based microcontroller programming. Of course a commercial debug adaptor can be used for better operation speed and more debug features.

Obviously a development suite that provides compilers, linker, debugger, etc is also required. There are a number of free or low cost development suites available. Some of the starter kits or development kits already come with a development suite. And many of the development boards can work with the USB debug adaptors in various starter kits. Many development suites provide limited versions of their development suite free of charge. For example, the 32Kbyte limited version of Keil Microcontroller Development Kit for ARM can be downloaded from the Keil web site for free (www.keil.com/download/product/). This includes compiler, source level debugger, example projects and a free embedded OS.

If this abstract has piqued your interest, read the full article online in the August issue of Electronic Specifier Design, by clicking here.