Release 2016.05

This is the fourth release of the embARC Open Software Platform, release 2016.05.

Tool Support

  • Eclipse IDE for GNU Toolchain for ARC Processors, 2015.12

  • MetaWare Development Toolkit, 2015.12

Features and Enhancements

  • Update support for EMSK and nSIM boards

    • uDMA and MPU supported

    • Update core configurations files

  • Add new middlewares

  • Add library support

    • dlmalloc

    • MetaWare standard c library for MetaWare toolchain

    • newlib c library for ARC GNU toolchain

  • Improvement to ARC HAL

    • Bug fixes in ARC cache driver

    • Bug fixes and improvements in ARC exception driver

  • Update middlewares

    • wolfSSL updated to 3.8.0

    • matrixssl updated to 3.8.3

  • Add TinyDTLS support to Contiki

  • Add SecureShield library

  • Rearrange embARC examples

    • Divided examples by different runtimes such as baremetal, FreeRTOS, Contiki

    • Remove some simple examples

    • Update example documentation

    • Make enhancements to all the remained examples

  • Add new examples

    • AWS IoT Smarthome demo for single node and multiple nodes

    • Secureshield examples for baremetal and Contiki runtime

    • Tinydtls examples for contiki

    • mbedTLS examples for FreeRTOS

    • ARC uDMA examples

  • Upgrade embARC application bring-up process

    • Board initialization is done before main function

    • NT-Shell, LwIP, and FatFs middleware are initialized before main function if enabled

    • FreeRTOS excution environment is initialized before main function

    • Details refer to board/board.c

    • Default core configuration for embARC application changed to EMSK2.2 - ARC EM7D

  • Documentation updates

  • Bug fixes

  • FOSS notice update

How to Use

Please refer to the doc folder in the release zip file and getting started instructions on embarc.org

Known Issues

  • Xively Cloud demo instability. The examples are functional but reliability of the Xively Cloud service may vary.

  • Make version >=4.0 is not supported. Please use make version 3.81 or 3.82

  • For Wifi applications, the Digilent pmod Wifi with Microchip part MRF24WG0MA should be used. Pmods built with MRF24WB0MA have been shown to experience problems and are NOT supported.

  • Please don’t put embARC source code too deep in your directory, because some examples can’t be compiled due to too long command line not supported in Windows.

  • Since brand new device hal API is upgraded, your application that use the old device hal API need to be upgraded.

  • For ARC GNU with EMSK 2.2, you need to change the JTAG adapter frequency(adapter_khz) in its openocd config file(<ARC_GNU>/share/openocd/scripts/board/snps_em_sk.cfg) to 5000, simply change the adapter_khz to 5000.

  • Secureshield library need MPU hardware module on EMSK, check your hardware configuration of EMSK before using it.

  • Compile and run secureshield example using ARC GNU, you need to install ARC GNU 2016.03.