Atmel Launches New Software Platform for Design
April 23, 2013, Atmel released their latest development tools platform for programming all of their micro-controller families. The increasing amount of software in embedded designs calls for better tools for code development.
Although the tools can be critical to project completion, the main purpose for their existence is to encourage more MCU adoption. This release is a full development platform for developers who need to optimize performance and memory while minimizing the software footprint in their embedded designs.
The issue of productivity is exacerbated by the lack of existing solutions. Design tools need to address four major components—hardware, the development environment, software, and storage. The tools run in the visual studio shell under Windows. The new release included components for all of these functions and consists of hardware and development tools, embedded software and an embedded ‘app’ store. The major components are XPlained Pro, Studio 6, Software Framework, and Gallery.
Xplained Pro is an evaluation kit with a development board, MCU, embedded debugger, and connectors for extension boards. The daughter boards plug into a bus and can be daisy-chained for further functionality. Plugging the board into a system and opening Studio 6 allows the designer to start development. the framework includes over 2,000 demonstration projects and the Gallery is an app store for third-party plug-ins and extensions for their projects. Apps are available in various categories, from free, to free to try, to full purchase.
The common tools are MCU agnostic and support the 8-bit Atmel MCUs and the 32-bit ARM Cortex M4-based SAM4Lfamily. The development kits and available daughter boards are set to auto-configure, minimizing the effort to bring up a new design. The XDK for the boards and their functions addresses interface issues in hardware, software, and the interfaces themselves.
The software has an SDK with documentation and examples, and the hardware from other vendors includes documentation. Other assistance is available through the design community AVR Freaks and Atmel Spaces where collaboration and open source rule. The integrated platform brings the tools for software design and hardware-software integration into the hands of any developer.
For more information, see www.atmel.com. A demonstration of the tool is available here
Atmel Studio 6: www.atmel.com/studio6
Atmel SAM4L: http://www.atmel.com/SAM4L
