Crossware ARM Development Suite for Atmel SAM7 Microcontrollers

Crossware anounced that its ARM Development Suite now supports Atmel SAM7 ARM-based microcontrollers. Atmel SAM7 (ARM7TDMI based) has rich on-chip peripherals including Ethernet controller, CAN, ADC, PWM, synchronous serial controller (SSC), serial peripheral interface (SPI) and USART. Crossware ARM Development Suite enable developers to rapidly exploit the advanced features of SAM7 chips by using a combination of wizards, simulation, debugging and compiler extensions, simplifying the complex task of setting up an ARM based application.

Crossware ARM Development Suite

The Crossware ARM Development Suite itself features:

• An advanced optimizing Embedded C++ and ANSI C compiler and libraries
• A source level simulator to simulate the ARM core and the on-chip peripherals allowing debugging without hardware
• Code Creation Wizards to create configuration code and outline interrupt handlers for on-chip peripherals
• A source level debugger to allow debugging on the target hardware
• An interface that allows the simulator to be extended facilitating complete target system simulation
• A USB JTAG interface to communicate between the debugger and the target hardware
• A multi-threaded, multi-target integrated development environment in which to write, edit and debug code, browse the high level source code, access electronic copies of the manuals and much more

Crossware ARM Development Suite is run on Windows 2000, XP and Vista.

About Crossware
Crossware is a developer of programmer-friendly C cross compilers and other development tools for embedded systems based on the 8051, ColdFire, ARM, 68000, CPU32 and other chip families. Crossware's products are used throughout the world by professional developers, educational establishments and hobbyists.

Crossware’s ARM Development Suite features C++ making the final codes much easier to understand and to modify. For example, Crossware's engineers have just developed firmware for the AT91SAM7X256 Flash microcontroller to control an imaging system and have written a C++ class to control the USB interface and another for the imaging sensor, and two instances of a stepper motor class to control movement of the sensor in the X and Y directions.

Crossware also used Code Creation Wizards to insert configuration code directly into the constructors of the classes to make them self-configuring. The Code Creation Wizards are provided for all on-chip peripherals and are able to generate configuration code, interrupt routines and, for the USARTs, complete I/O handlers. The simulator simulates the ARM core itself as well as many of the SAM7 on-chip peripherals including the advanced interrupt controller (AIC) and the peripheral DMA controller (PDC). This allows a developer to use the simulator to immediately test the code created using the wizards.

The simulator can also be extended using the Virtual Workshop Interface allowing developers to construct a simulation of their complete target system. The 'Virtual Components' have now been introduced to take advantage of this Virtual Workshop Interface allowing the developer to extend the simulator without any additional coding being required. These pre-written simulator extensions can be rapidly integrated into the development environment and configured to customize their interaction with the simulating microcontroller.

The Crossware Jaguar USB JTAG interface facilitates on-chip debugging. This connects to the standard ARM 20-pin JTAG connector allowing the Crossware source level debugger to drive the on-chip ARM embedded in-circuit emulator (EmbeddedICE) logic. The Crossware debugger together with the Jaguar interface can program the entire 256k flash memory memory of an Atmel AT91SAM7X256 in less than 6 seconds.

More info: Crossware ARM Development Suite for Atmel SAM7 Microcontrollers