News

Metrowerks embedded collaborations spawn specialized SDKs

• By John K. Waters
• May 22, 2003

The ongoing collaborations of software development toolmaker Metrowerks and several mobile technology companies are producing an interesting brood of specialized application development kits. The Austin, Texas-based maker of the popular CodeWarrior development tools has been working with Texas Instruments (TI), Siemens and PalmSource, among others, to provide developers with tools adapted to the close quarters of smartphones and PDAs.

Metrowerks, an independently operating subsidiary of Motorola Inc., has been working with Texas Instruments -- a longtime Motorola competitor -- to produce a customized, Symbian-based development kit for creating 2.5G and 3G wireless applications and mobile devices for TI hardware. The new CodeWarrior Wireless Development Kit, OMAP Edition is being designed to leverage TI's OMAP platform and to improve the time to market for new devices and applications, said TI Marketing Director Paul Werp in a statement.

Metrowerks CodeWarrior Development Studio for Symbian OS is an integrated set of software programming tools designed to enable developers to create, debug and compile C/C++ Symbian applications for platforms based on the Symbian OS.

The OEM version of the OMAP Edition is expected to include CodeWarrior Development Studio for Symbian OS, OEM Edition; Version 2.5 with Virtio OMAP 1510 Softboard and TI Target Server featuring JTAG connectivity; and Symbian OS 7.x OS image and CD, with target server and Metrowerks MetroTRK (target resident kernel) support included.

Metrowerks has also been collaborating with mobile phone manufacturer Siemens to create a Symbian-based developer kit for the Siemens SX1 Smartphone, as well as with PalmSource, which recently took the wraps off the newest version of CodeWarrior Development Studio for Palm OS, Version 9.2.

Also on tap is CodeWarrior Development Studio for ColdFire Architectures, Version 4.0. Announced last month, the software is designed to support the Motorola MCF5282, the first 32-bit microcontroller (MCU) that provides on-chip Ethernet and Controller Area Network (CAN) networking interfaces plus 512K of embedded flash memory. The MCF5282 can be used in embedded products ranging from security systems, home networking and food service equipment, to industrial control networks such as CAN gateways and routers. It supports a number of commercially available RTOS and networking protocol stacks.

Links:

For other Programmers Report articles, please go to www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=6265