ARM announces mbed version 2.0 and releases open source SDK and development board HDK

These announcements, combined with the growing efforts and contributions of the mbed.org developer community, give developers further reason to base their next Cortex-M series processor-based project development on the mbed platform.

Why:

Open Source SDK

The mbed SDK, already relied upon by tens of thousands of developers, has been extended and released free under a permissive open source license. It has been carefully designed to provide a C/C++ platform with enough hardware abstraction to be intuitive and concise yet powerful enough to build complex projects fast. Built on the ARM CMSIS low-level APIs it allows developers to go right down to the hardware when needed. It is portable across multiple popular toolchains and in addition to free open source middleware such as RTOS, USB and Networking libraries, the SDK has been built upon by the mbed developer community to create a cookbook of reusable driver libraries for connecting to peripherals and modules.

Development Board HDK

The new mbed HDK delivers microcontroller sub-system reference designs that can be used as the basis for new hardware boards and products. It provides simple and consistent building blocks that benefit from the support of the mbed SDK and free online tools. The HDK designs specify all major support components including an on-board USB interface that enables simple drag-n-drop programming and connection to the microcontroller via the USB CMSIS-DAP debug interface standard. The design is currently used in the official mbed Microcontroller prototyping modules, it is also being adopted by mbed partners for low-cost evaluation boards, and is now available for use in custom designs.

Free Online Tools

The mbed Compiler provides a free, powerful, online IDE that is powered by the industry standard ARM professional C/C++ compiler, pre-configured and tested to generate fast, efficient code without fuss. It is fully integrated with the mbed.org developer site to enable one-click library imports, and with distributed version control for contribution and collaboration for those wanting to work together. The mbed Compiler also supports export of projects to the major offline toolchains. Combined with the portability of the mbed SDK and USB CMSIS-DAP debug interface, this allows an easy next step towards product development using whichever tool is most appropriate.

How:

Developer Community

By basing designs on the mbed Platform, developers adopt a huge shared context; that makes it much easier to share questions, code, answers and expertise. This has helped mbed grow an active and friendly community of skilled developers that are collectively helping create products even faster. Developers are sharing thousands of open source repositories and building an extensive cookbook of recipes that can be reused to build their products. The tight integration of distributed version control with the online compiler and developer website makes publishing and accepting code simple, allowing developers to easily collaborate on hard problems, and provides opportunities to request or accept contract work to help build projects.

Getting Started

The easiest way to get started with the mbed Platform is to get hold of an official mbed Microcontroller prototyping board or look out for the imminent arrival of the first mbed-enabled partner development boards. For those wanting to develop their own custom board, the mbed HDK is available now.