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ARM updates RealView development suite; adds Cortex-M1 support

The update provides performance improvements and better tuning for the different ARM processors, most notably for the Cortex family and the new Cortex-M1 processor.

By Robert Cravotta, Technical Editor -- EDN, 4/3/2007

This week at ESC, ARM announced version 3.1 upgrades to its RealView Development Suite for the full line of ARM processors.

The update provides performance improvements and better tuning for the different ARM processors, most notably for the Cortex family and the new Cortex-M1 processor, which is optimized to reside on an FPGA and was announced recently with Actel. Actel has licensed the Cortex-M1 processor and has made it available at no additional charge for designers to use in Actel's flash-based M1-enabled Actel Fusion Programmable System Chips and ProASIC3 FPGAs.

The tool suite is the first to support the new Cortex-M1 processor, and it includes an instruction-set system model. The suite maintains interoperability with the RealView CREATE family of ESL (electronic system level) design tools and models. In addition, the RealView Development Suite is now integrated into the open-source Eclipse Integrated Development Environment.

The tool suite features a new optional microlib C library (a subset of the ISO standard C run-time library), which has been minimized in size for microcontroller applications; it achieves a 92% reduction in run-time library code size, according to the company. Designers using the ARMNEON SIMD signal-processing architecture can also separately license an add-on vectorizing compiler that complements the suite.

The RealView ICE version 3.1 run-control unit and its RealView Trace module, used with RealView Development Suite 3.1, now offer extended support for the ARM CoreSight debug and trace technology, including multiple trace streams through a single port. The upgrade also supports the CoreSight Single Wire Debug interface. New intrinsics support for ARM DSP instruction-set extensions, ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) functions, and TI C55x DSPs allows designers to write their signal-processing code with C intrinsics rather than assembly language.

RealView Development Suite 3.1 supports the latest ANSI C99 language standard. ARM partners are already using the suite, and it will be generally available in Q2 from ARM and its RealView distributor network.