The firmware has been developed in close cooperation with Atmel and can be downloaded from the SEGGER website, free of charge.
The J-Link is known for having the highest download speed into RAM and flash memory on all supported targets.
In addition, the J-Link allows setting an unlimited number of breakpoints in flash memory which is extremely useful, as most Xplained systems are based on Cortex-M0+ devices which only provide two hardware breakpoints.
SEGGER also offers a free cross-platform GDB Server for J-Link which opens the whole GDB world to Atmel Xplained users, allowing them to use any GDB-based debug solution (e.g. emIDE and Eclipse) with J-Link.