SEGGER embOS RTOS Transforms 64-bit SoCs Into Single Chip Computers

German company SEGGER Microcontroller continues to expand its state-of-the-art software libraries and hardware and software tools for embedded systems development and production. In an interesting development, SEGGER has announced that its embOS real-time operating system now supports 64-bit processor cores. And many developers would also be interested to know that the company's SystemView verification solution for embedded development is now available under Friendly Licensing.
 
Today, most implementations for IoT and connected devices in general, including a wide range of audio-focused connected solutions and other sophisticated embedded applications rely on 32-bit CPUs. In the very near future, however, they will start migrating to higher performance 64-bit CPUs - as it already happened for all major IT and mobile platforms. This is because the latest generation of SoCs and FPGAs with advanced peripherals (like SuperSpeed USB and Gigabit Ethernet) tend to also come with powerful 64-bit CPU cores incorporated. Such peripherals are usually not available to the 32-bit core devices currently deployed.

With embOS, users can now easily upgrade to 64-bit systems while continuing to run the same application software as deployed to their current 32-bit platforms. This will ensure that the same deterministic real-time behavior is maintained, while enabling even higher speeds to be delivered.

"Customers want to specify the latest SoCs or FPGAs for their systems, which are now integrating 64-bit processing resources," says Til Stork, Product Manager for embOS at SEGGER. “In most cases we see companies switch to 64-bit not because they want to, but because they have to in order to benefit from state-of-the-art silicon featuring next generation interfaces. With embOS, the transition to using these more powerful chips is easy. At the same time, the application program remains streamlined, boots quickly and is fully under the control of the programmer."

In many cases, the small footprint of embOS enables the use of 64-bit cores with just the on-chip RAM and cache memory. This eliminates the need for inclusion of external RAM. The number of components is consequently lowered, thereby reducing both the complexity and cost of the end product.

embOS is a commercial RTOS that is available for use across all silicon manufacturers’ platforms and directly supported by the experts who wrote the code. For more information on SEGGER's embOS visit: www.segger.com/products/rtos/embos/ 

SystemView Now Available Under Friendly Licensing
SEGGER’s SystemView is now available under Friendly Licensing, making the important task of Embedded Systems verification accessible to everyone. SystemView reveals the true runtime behavior of an application, allowing developers to confirm that a system performs as designed. It can show every interrupt and task change and can log messages, waypoints, and even API functions with a timestamp accurate to a single clock cycle. While being useful in simple super-loop applications, it is particularly effective when working with complex, RTOS-based Embedded Systems comprised of multiple threads and interrupts. It makes it easy to verify system behavior, track down inefficiencies and find unintended interactions and resource conflicts.

“System verification should not be an afterthought,” says Paul Curtis, Senior Developer at SEGGER. “I use SystemView in development all the time. Using SystemView during development ensures that my system is working the way I expect it to, every step of the way.”

“We use SystemView in the development of all of our embedded products to optimize and verify system behavior,” says Rolf Segger. “Given the complexity of today’s embedded products, I am convinced it is impossible to do this to the same degree without a tool like SystemView.” SystemView can use a simple memory buffer to record data on any Embedded System. When using Ethernet or SEGGER's J-Link Real Time Transfer (RTT) technology, SystemView can stream, analyze, and visualize an unlimited amount of data in real time. The recorded data can be stored for later analysis and documentation purposes.

Under SEGGER’s Friendly License, SystemView can be downloaded without registration and used free of charge for educational and non-commercial purposes, as well as evaluated without code size, feature, or time limit, on all platforms. This puts SystemView under the same friendly terms as SEGGER’s Ozone debugger and SEGGER’s Embedded Studio IDE.

All J-Link models are fully compatible with SystemView. This includes the low-cost educational versions J-Link EDU and J-Link EDU Mini and even J-Link OB (on-board many evaluation boards).

SEGGER provides an RTOS plus a complete spectrum of software libraries including communication, security, data compression and storage, user interface software and more. SEGGER’s professional software libraries and tools for Embedded System development are designed for simple usage and are optimized for the requirements imposed by resource-constrained embedded systems. The company, founded by Rolf Segger in 1992, also has a U.S. office in the Boston area and branch operations in Silicon Valley, plus distributors on most continents.
www.segger.com