ARM Community: Software Enablement - ARM Community

Great leaps in human knowledge are linked to advancements in tools. For software engineers the debugger is a cornerstone tool to create reliable products. We engage in a running battle fighting both the problem and the tool because each debug situation is unique.

This is a major challenge for debugger designers, i.e. how do we build a debugger with a balance of flexibility and simplicity with enough usefulness? With the rate of hardware change increasing – along with improvements in Operating Systems and Programming Languages, debugging and optimizing software becomes paramount i.e. improving performance, code-size and energy-efficiency.

As we transition towards more hardware parallelism the pressure grows to keep the time-to-market at least constant which in turn means new debugging strategies. From my perspective it is always good to draw from the current technology landscape and view how we can use these technologies in the future. For instance, Cover Flow UI could be used to improve multi-processor viewing, Microsoft Kinect to navigate the debug UI, and further more expert systems running in the cloud to help a...

This blog is aimed at getting you started quickly in the world of Android development. I've included links to some golden tutorials and programs I found useful.. I've also included solutions to the annoying time-wasting problems I encountered when first starting out. I hope they will be helpful and will save you from the frustration I went through.

Setting up your Development environment
To get up and running quickly, follow the instructions from the Android developers site to set up your software development environment. If you don’t have an Android phone, don’t worry, the SDK contains an Android emulator.

I definitely recommend using the Android development tool plug-in for Eclipse. For someone like me who makes lots of common mistakes, such as missing imports of libraries and not putting the right parameters into a method, Eclipse is great because it easily spots common errors and offers quick fixes. There are many versions of Eclipse and it can be confusing which one you need to download. I use Eclipse Gali...

ARM processors have been predominant in the smartphone market and are becoming increasingly mainstream in the overall embedded space. More recently, ARM processors are targeting servers as well, pursuing the computing continuum with solutions.

However, historically ARM systems did not have a preboot firmware standard. This led each design have its own distinct firmware model that is tightly coupled to the operating system being booted. This traditional approach means the firmware developers would need to maintain completely different codebases even though the systems may use many of the same types of peripheral devices (Network, SATA, USB controllers, etc.) and feature sets across the designs. Generations of ARM cores relied on boot packages such as UBoot, Redboot, or proprietary software.

How to efficiently develop and ship these products and meet time to market demands becomes a challenge. Some form of converged firmware infrastructure is necessary to maximize proper code re...

This two-part blog gives a historical perspective on the ARM vs. 80x86 instruction set competition for three eras: PrePC (late 1970s/early 1980s), PC (mid 1980s to mid 2000s), and PostPC (late 2000s onward).

Round 1: The Beginning of Reduced vs. Complex Instruction Set Computers
The first round of the RISC-CISC Wars started 30 years ago with the publication of “The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer” [1] and the companion piece “Comments on "The Case for the Reduced Instruction Set Computer"[2]. We argued then that an instruction set made up of simple or reduced instructions using easy-to-decode instruction formats and lots of registers was a better match to integrated circuits and compiler technology than the instructions sets of the 1970s that featured complex instructions and formats. Our counterexamples were the Digital VAX-11/780, the Intel iAPX-432, and the Intel 8086 architectures, which we labeled Complex Instruction Set Computers (CISC).

I recently found an old set of hand-drawn slides from 1981, one of which shows the simple instructions and formats of the Berkeley RISC architecture.


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So I can’t turn down a challenge. How was I going to improve the speed of the solver? Lights, camera, action! Yes I did it. I improved the Rubik Speedcuber from 25 to 15 seconds. And it only took travel, lights, camera, image analysis, native Android coding, a new phone and food. Intrigued? Check out the new demo at the ARM Technology Conference (ARM Techcon) in Santa Clara, California on Thursday Nov 11.

Challenge: How much faster can you make the Speedcuber?
Some people consider me to be a perfectionist. My view on this is just that I like to do things to the best of my ability and am always ready to accept a challenge. So when Ian Pilkington, Applied Systems Engineering Manager at ARM, asked, “How much faster can you make your Speedcuber?” I just had to try…

For those of you who are new to my blogs, you should be aware that I have a passion for LEGO, Rubik’s Cubes and software programming (on ...

Yesterday at Computex, the Microsoft Windows Embedded team announced the availability of the latest version of Windows Embedded CE – officially known Windows Embedded Compact 7. The release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) which is a fancy way to say public beta. The CTP can be downloaded from the Microsoft website.

Windows Embedded Compact 7 includes a list of cool features to help OEMs develop smart, connected, service oriented devices with custom user-interfaces. But, if you take a closer at the code you’ll notice an engineering investment and significant improvement – Compact 7 now includes support for more ARM architectures including ARMv7, ARMv7 NEON™ and SMP.

The added ARM architectures provide OEMs working with Windows Embedded competitive performance in the segments proliferated by ARM and our ARM Partners – ...

Sitting in the airport at the end of a week’s business trip to the US, I reflected back on the week. It turned out that my colleague on this trip has an even worse sense of direction than myself…Potentially disastrous, especially when you’re driving between airports, hotels and meetings in cities that you’ve never visited. This is where Google Maps becomes utterly indispensable. Installed on my Nokia E71 it makes use of the built in GPS and 3G and Edge networks to provide a running view of where we are, driving or walking. Without it we wouldn’t have found the wonderful Boulderado hotel or the Boulder Bookstore with its impressive converted ballroom. Actually, we’d probably still be driving around somewhere near Dallas.

Life changing and mind boggling as the online, always connected life of a sometime digital nomad is, w...