IAR Systems supports Atmel's ARM Cortex-M3 based SAM3U MCU

UPPSALA, SWEDEN: IAR Systems announced that IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM and IAR PowerPac for ARM now feature full support for the Atmel ARM Cortex-M3-based SAM3U microcontroller (MCU) family.

In close cooperation with Atmel, IAR Systems has added new configuration files, flash loaders and project examples to IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM for Atmel’s new SAM3U Cortex-M3 based microcontroller.

The device specific support achieved by these additions makes it quick and easy to get started with a project and allows the user to concentrate on application development tasks.

The latest update of IAR PowerPac includes the new Board Support Packages (BSPs) for the SAM3U as well as the new SAM3U evaluation kit available from Atmel and IAR Systems.

The BSPs include all the drivers and low level routines needed for the operating system and communication software to interface the hardware and access the peripherals on the boards.

The IAR PowerPac USB stack takes full advantage of the 480 Mbps High Speed USB Device controller and benefits from the advanced DMA supported bus and memory architecture in the SAM3U device. The SDIO/SD-card interface is fully supported in the popular PowerPac File system with its powerful Multimedia support.

"IAR Systems development tools have for a long time been the tool set of choice for our ARM Flash-based microcontroller developments." said Jacko Wilbrink, Marketing Director for ARM-based Microcontrollers.

"The well tested comprehensive IAR tools support the whole range of Atmel microcontrollers now including the new SAM3U device. Atmel and IAR pre- and post-sales engineers have full access to IAR tools and evaluation kits ensuring quick turn-around and high-quality support to customers."

"We have a long history of working closely with Atmel to provide our joint microcontroller customers with best in class development tools”, said Anders Flodin, Director of Business Development, IAR Systems.

"The addition of this new high performance connectivity oriented device, will, in combination with the IAR Systems development tools, RTOS and middleware products, create new exciting opportunities for our customers in the embedded space."

IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM is a set of highly sophisticated and easy-to-use development tools. It incorporates an ARM Cortex-M3 C/C++ compiler, assembler, linker, librarian, text editor, project manager, and debugger combined in an integrated development environment (IDE) for programming embedded applications.

In addition to supporting debugging through the JTAG port, IAR Embedded Workbench also supports Serial Wire Output (SWO), which is part of CoreSight, the on-chip debug and trace solution used in the Cortex processor family and in the Atmel SAM3U.

The user has full freedom to configure the types of packets sent over the SWO channel that should be displayed by IAR C-SPY debugger. Additionally, debug log messages from a printf output can be also displayed by IAR C-SPY, without having to halt the execution.

IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM is developed to deliver high performance compiled code. The chip-specific code optimizer generates very efficient and reliable flashable code for the Atmel microcontrollers.

Recently added, multi-file compilation is a feature that allows the compiler to treat several files as one compilation unit that means it can optimize over a larger scope of code.

IAR PowerPac is a family of real-time operating system, file system and USB and TCP/IP communication stacks. It is integrated with IAR Embedded Workbench for ARM to ensure quick and easy project start-up and application development.

Atmel’s SAM3U device is the industry's first ARM Cortex™-M3 Flash MCU integrating high speed (480 Mbps) USB Device-and-Transceiver, 4-bit 192 Mbps SDIO/SDCard 2.0, 8-bit 384 Mbps MMC 4.3 Host and 48 Mpbs SPI interfaces on-chip.

This connectivity, together with the SAM3U's 96 MHz/1.25 DMIPS/MHz operating frequency, makes the SAM3U the unique Cortex-M3 device suited to applications with intensive communications requirements, such high speed gateways in industrial, medical, data processing and consumer applications.

The introduction of the SAM3U expands Atmel's 32-Bit MCU portfolio consisting of ARM and AVR32 products.