Silicon Labs brings 8 and 32bit MCUs into toolchain
Silicon Labs has brought development support for both its 8bit and ongoing 32bit microcontroller (MCUs) lines together using the Simplicity Studio that the company acquired with the Energy Micro portfolio last year.
Geir Førre, senior vice president and general manager for MCU and wireless products, said the environment supports both Keil and GCC build tools for the 8051-compatible and ARM-based products as well as Eclipse plugins. “The Keil PK51 is free for 8bit development,” he added. “In the future, Simplicity Studio will support all technology from Silicon Labs.”
However, the environment does not support Silicon Labs’ Precision 32 line. “It’s a somewhat smaller portfolio than EFM32. Those on the market already will be supported for many years but we recommend that new customers use EMF32,” said Førre.
The integrated development environment (IDE) includes tools to configure the target MCU automatically and provides sample code and application examples for the relevant part. Users who prefer to use the Keil µVision or IAR Embedded Workbench IDE can launch those from within the IDE.
Additional tools help designers ease development by configuring MCU pinout and peripheral placement and by generating relevant C I/O functions. The configuration tools also automatically resolve pinout conflicts.