UK chip designer Arm has announced two initiatives to provide a step change in productivity for embedded, IoT, machine-learning and MCU software developers.

The Open-CMSIS-Pack project should deliver the infrastructure to integrate and manage software components and improve code reuse across projects. Keil Studio Cloud provides a cloud-hosted platform with direct Git integration and modern CI workflows for rapid IoT device development.

“Arm is focused on rapidly empowering the world’s largest embedded software ecosystem, and today we’re announcing two important steps towards this vision,” said Reinhard Keil, senior director of embedded tools at Arm. “We believe the next, and most exciting, phase of IoT is upon us, and these initiatives will broaden access to the software and tools that will spark the industry’s true potential.”

The IoT is transitioning to a period of rapid growth, driven by increased compute, connectivity and security capabilities, the rapid evolution of machine learning (ML) processing at the endpoint, 5G deployments and evolving IoT platforms from major cloud service providers.

“This is a new, more complex world, where the journey to successful IoT implementations requires strong industry collaboration and a robust ecosystem of support and tools,” said Keil. “Arm is focused on rapidly empowering the world’s largest embedded software ecosystem, and we’re announcing two important steps towards this vision.”

MCU-based devices form the majority of the things in IoT, as evidenced by the more than 70 billion chips based on the Arm Cortex-M processor family shipped by Arm’s partners since its introduction in 2003. However, software compatibility for component re-use has long been a challenge, with the IoT landscape being much more diverse at the hardware level compared with PCs or data centres.

To address this, Arm offers the Common Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS), which is a vendor-independent abstraction layer for microcontrollers, specifically for Arm Cortex-M processors. This includes CMSIS-Pack packaging technology that supports close to 9000 different microcontrollers, making project integration of drivers, middleware and other software components across multiple Arm-based devices easier.

“We are incredibly excited to announce we are moving parts of CMSIS into an open project called Open-CMSIS-Pack, which will deliver the infrastructure to integrate and manage software components and improve code reuse across projects,” said Keil.

In concert with Arm partners, the Open-CMSIS-Pack project will begin its life as an incubation initiative under the Linaro IoT and Embedded Group, focusing on a standard for software component packaging and related foundation tools for validation, distribution, integration, management and maintenance.

“Linaro is delighted to take on the Open-CMSIS-Pack project and drive the collaborative engineering needed to improve the integration and management of software components,” said Andrea Gallo, vice president at Linaro. “By encouraging code reuse and the adoption of consistent software interfaces and baselines across projects, Linaro and Arm continue to reduce overall fragmentation in the IoT and embedded software ecosystem, enabling device manufacturers to focus on their value add.”

The initial focus of Open-CMSIS-Pack will be command-line tools and CMake workflows that enable the broader ecosystem to integrate CMSIS-Pack-based development flows. This project is seen as the starting point for evolving the CMSIS-Pack technology into a true open standard for MCU software component packaging, targeting key interfaces for major IoT platforms and producing a framework that can be embraced across the ecosystem.

“Another major priority of ours is delivering improved and more flexible tooling for software developers,” said Keil. “We’re also announcing that Keil Studio Cloud, the first component of the next-generation Keil tool suite is moving into an open beta phase. This early access beta will allow developers to experience the Keil Studio workflow first hand with a limited set of supported development boards and features.”

The tool will evolve over several software releases, delivering a desktop and cloud experience that will provide developers with:

• An IDE that runs in the browser and connects directly to boards on the desktop. There is no complicated tool installation, and example projects along with the related resources are always up to date so developers can have code running on a device within minutes.
• Direct Git integration enabling distributed teams, collaborative development, and modern CI workflows that leverage Arm modelling technology.
• Flexible cloud-hosted development first introduced by the Mbed online compiler, with Keil capabilities such as CMSIS-Pack software components and run-control debug.
• A portal for the broader software ecosystem to collaborate on, submit examples and share feedback will be available in a later release in 2021.

Combined with Keil MDK, Keil Studio will offer an IoT, ML and embedded development environment even for demanding real-time and functional safety projects.

A recent Forrester report commissioned by Arm illustrates that OEMs and independent software vendors developing or adopting IoT-enabled devices, or applications, are keen to collaborate with third parties to leverage existing technologies to accelerate deployment, with 98% of those surveyed reporting challenges across all stages of development.

“We believe the next, and most exciting, phase of IoT is upon us, and these initiatives will broaden access to the software and tools that will spark the industry’s true potential,” said Keil.

Joe Yu, vice president at NXP Semiconductors, added: “Our strategic partnership with Arm is key to helping the developer community move from prototype to production as quickly as possible. The combination of Keil’s next-generation tools with NXP devices and the Open-CMSIS-Pack project will help increase productivity across the industry by encouraging code reuse, improving software component deployment and enhancing development time. These new initiatives underpin the strength of our partnership.”

And Laurent Desseignes, marketing manager at ST Microelectronics, said: “Building on STM’s long-term commitment to innovation and development of time-to-market accelerators, which include our broad product portfolio, rich development ecosystem and application-support infrastructure, we continue to enable fast and cost-effective IoT. Keil’s next-generation tools and the Open-CMSIS-Pack project are focused on those important goals and will prove valuable to the entire community.”