Altium Limited, a global leader in Smart System Design Automation, 3D PCB design (Altium Designer) and embedded software development (TASKING), has announced a new release of its TASKING compiler suite for ARM, extending its support for many new ARM® Cortex®-M based microcontrollers, including Cortex-M7 variants. This new compiler suite is available now and all existing customers with a maintenance contract can upgrade to the new release for free on the TASKING website.

“As embedded applications become more advanced than ever, developers need tools that allow them to easily optimize their workflows in the most efficient way possible,” said Harm-André Verhoef, TASKING Product Manager at Altium. “This new release of the TASKING compiler for ARM provides embedded developers all around the world with an efficient and streamlined development environment to create the most intelligent embedded applications possible.”

Enhanced Tools for Embedded Applications

This new toolset targets the development of advanced embedded applications based on the highly popular Cortex-M microcontroller family from the world’s leading semiconductor vendors. The toolset includes an Eclipse based IDE, C and C++ compiler, multi-core ready linker, simulator, in-circuit debugger, microcontroller Pin Mapper and the award winning Software Platform. This platform enables embedded software developers to: 

• Complete applications in a fast and cost-efficient way with a Real-Time Operating System and a wide variety of    middleware components.
• Release optimized applications to market faster by being able to easily change semiconductor manufacturers and migrate application projects to new controllers.
• Save time when swapping pin assignments between PCB documents and embedded software projects with an improved microcontroller Pin Mapper.

The TASKING Software Platform included in this toolset contains a wide collection of frequently used middleware components, such as TCP/IP, USB, CAN, web server, graphical user-interface, and an RTOS. At the cost of a traditional development toolset the developer gets everything needed build an application much faster than is possible with other compiler suites and third party middleware components

Availability

The new release is made available on Windows and Linux, but as a single commercial compiler vendor Altium also supports the embedded developer community on the Mac OS X platform. This support enables the creation of applications for the growing ecosystem around the iPhone such as wearable electronics as well as electronic systems that can be controlled from an iPhone.

The TASKING VX-toolset for ARM Cortex-M release v5.2 is available now on Windows, OS X and Linux, with 30 day trial versions available on request. Existing customers with a maintenance contract can upgrade to the new release for free.