ARM Community: A migraine-free design process? Sign me up! - ARM Community

Not too long ago, I moved into a new house. I wanted to construct a home entertainment and networking system, so I set out to gather my supplies. As I was driving all over town, I thought, “How great would it be if everything I was running myself ragged trying to find was in one location?” It would be awesome to have the shelving, cables, hardware, servers, speakers and the core entertainment components in one store. My life would be a lot easier. That got me thinking about the embedded design process. Focusing on application design instead of searching for the right components would certainly simplify product design.

The design process can be quite messy at times when your solutions and tools aren’t centralized. You could be moving right along developing this great application using an ARM processor-based product when all of a sudden, you have some unexpected obstacles. Then the scramble to find a solution begins.

What to consider when selecting a processor
When selecting the processor, the most important part of the design process, a designer evaluates power, performance, peripherals, security and other important features of the device. But another really important element of the design process is ensuring the hardware you select has adequate development tools, software and support to easily begin development at your desired level of product differentiation. Software development is greatly impacted by the types of tooling and software available for a processor. As a result, the starting point for the typical embedded processing software development project is usually the tools and other types of resources that the development team will employ.

For a cohesive design process, a developer must always evaluate the entire embedded system solution – hardware, software, tools and support – to avoid having to spend time “shopping” at various companies to try and bring all the elements together. Even if the designer is able to effectively bring these disparate elements together, he or she might struggle to make them all work together easily and cohesively.

Some questions you might ask yourself to help select the correct processor, as well as ease and accelerate the design process are does the hardware offer:

• Development tools, such as an evaluation module, reference design or low-cost development board
• Full software development kit (SDK) that gives access to all software components
• Software libraries for specific applications in which you’re interested
• Software support for operating systems (Linux, Android and Windows Embedded CE)
• Demos for key applications
• Software tools that make coding easier
• Support to help answer design questions

There are many ARM processor silicon providers in the industry. Texas Instruments offers a total system solution for our embedded ARM devices, and so do many other companies. Collaborating with companies like ARM, which offer ecosystems of development tools and software solutions, gives developers additional support needed for a migraine-free development process.

What do you think about having one company offering production-ready solutions? How could it help your design process?

Jake Alamat, Director of Marketing for Texas Instruments’ (TI) Sitara™ ARM® microprocessor (MPU) business unit. Prior to his current role, Jake served as a TI technical sales executive and a DaVinci™ digital media processor product marketing manager. Jake received his degree from Michigan State University and has been with TI for more than nine years.

ARM welcomes its wealth of Partners in the ARM Connected Community (CC) to submit guest blogs to be published on our multiple community blogs. If interested in participating please submit email inquiries to Tell.Us@arm.com.

The ARM Connected Community (CC) is an extensive ecosystem covering all aspects of ARM-based design, from chip implementation through to system and device design. The CC provides a platform for collaborative innovation, with multiple types of forums for members to work with one another, and with customers, to solve industry challenges, all with the purpose of enabling designers to focus on differentiating features and an accelerated time-to-market for ARM powered solutions.