SEGGER introduces Device Provisioner for target device configuration

Modern chips required an increasing level of customer- and device-specific configuration. The driving force behind this was security, especially as more devices connected to the Internet. Unfortunately, there was no industry standard for provisioning device security and configuration. Options differed from one silicon vendor to another, even from device to device, and they kept evolving, making a flexible tool necessary.

The Device Provisioner was a command-line tool that offered utmost flexibility, enabling users to customise their own device provisioning. This included (but was not limited to) conditioning, programming (including special areas), downloading of certificates, serial number assignment, locking and unlocking, as well as security activation and TrustZone/partitioning configuration. Users could also enable or disable debugging, set fuses, program option bytes and flash, or anything else that the target required.

“The Device Provisioner is a masterpiece of software engineering,” says Rolf Segger, Founder of SEGGER. “It can do anything that any device needs done. It has a built-in C compiler and full access to all interfaces and all functions offered by J-Link and Flasher, including fully user-programmable interface coprocessors to cover existing and any future on-the-wire protocols. With all this, I think it might be the most universal tool in the history of embedded systems. I am extremely proud of our engineers – they’ve really outdone themselves on this one.”

The Device Provisioner executed commands from a script written in the C language, which could be provided by SEGGER, the silicon vendor, or written by the users themselves. The Device Provisioner was included in the software package for both the J-Link and Flasher families of products. Script files could be executed on J-Links and Flashers while connected to a host PC, as well as executed by Flashers in stand-alone mode.

Script files could be distributed in source code or in pre-compiled form to protect intellectual property. With SEGGER's production programmers and debug probes, users were prepared for the challenges of tomorrow.