Freescale's Eclipse-based CodeWarrior 10 tool suite eases embedded software development

AUSTIN, USA: Freescale Semiconductor is helping streamline embedded software development with the launch of its new CodeWarrior 10 development suites, based on open-source Eclipse™ technology.

The CodeWarrior integrated development environment (IDE) continues to be the essential tool for code development, debug and test when designing with Freescale’s extensive range of microcontroller (MCU) and microprocessor (MPU) solutions. Now with the introduction of CodeWarrior 10 IDE, software developers have access to the Eclipse ‘ease of use’ features as well as an integrated, extensible suite of plug-ins from Freescale, its partners and the Eclipse community for the multiple phases of software development.

CodeWarrior 10 tool suite is available in three different suites: CodeWarrior Development Studio for MCUs version 10.0 (pre-release available today, production release expected to be available July 16, 2010), CodeWarrior Development Studio for StarCore version 10.0 (available today), and CodeWarrior Development Studio for Power Architecture Technology version 10.0 (expected to be available Q1 2011).

“Freescale understands the software needs of our customers and is committed to providing a user-friendly development platform that can take full advantage of the chosen silicon for a particular application,” said Tim Tumilty, director of Developer Tools and Technology at Freescale. “Now with Eclipse, our CodeWarrior suite of tools allows developers to customize their development environment, as well as enables tighter technology integration with our partners.”

Freescale joined the Eclipse Foundation two years ago to promote embedded initiatives as a core part of the Eclipse roadmap. Eclipse technology is an open architecture software platform that eases software development by enabling tool integration for customers and third party vendors across Freescale’s portfolio.

The open source nature of the Eclipse environment already is embraced by many of Freescale's third party vendors, including Enea and Mentor Graphics, with hundreds of free and commercial plug-ins available to improve productivity and reliability and reduce software development time.

Furthermore, the Eclipse platform creates the opportunity for CodeWarrior toolset plug-ins to enable Freescale silicon development on other Eclipse-based platforms — encouraging innovation between customers, partners and third parties by using a single, compartmentalized environment for development activities.