Book Image

The Insider's Guide to Arm Cortex-M Development

By : Zachary Lasiuk, Pareena Verma, Jason Andrews
Book Image

The Insider's Guide to Arm Cortex-M Development

By: Zachary Lasiuk, Pareena Verma, Jason Andrews

Overview of this book

Cortex-M has been around since 2004, so why a new book now? With new microcontrollers based on the Cortex-M55 and Cortex-M85 being introduced this year, Cortex-M continues to expand. New software concepts, such as standardized software reuse, have emerged alongside new topics including security and machine learning. Development methodologies have also significantly advanced, with more embedded development taking place in the cloud and increased levels of automation. Due to these advances, a single engineer can no longer understand an entire project and requires new skills to be successful. This book provides a unique view of how to navigate and apply the latest concepts in microcontroller development. The book is split into two parts. First, you’ll be guided through how to select the ideal set of hardware, software, and tools for your specific project. Next, you’ll explore how to implement essential topics for modern embedded developers. Throughout the book, there are examples for you to learn by working with real Cortex-M devices with all software available on GitHub. You will gain experience with the small Cortex-M0+, the powerful Cortex-M55, and more Cortex-M processors. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to practically apply modern Cortex-M software development concepts.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Part 1: Get Set Up
5
Part 2: Sharpen Your Skills

Why embedded software CI can be challenging

Creating software gets harder when you develop on a platform different from the platform you deploy on. When developing a website that will be deployed on a Linux-based server, developing on a Linux machine makes it easier to validate software behavior, as development tests will match the production environment. You could use a Linux laptop or a virtual machine to replicate this environment locally. Further, it is easy to access rich OS machines en masse via cloud platforms that offer Linux, Windows, and macOS operating systems.

By contrast, we still develop embedded projects on laptops and PCs but deploy them onto totally different hardware. Developing a smart lightbulb powered by an Arm Cortex-M7 on a Windows laptop is challenging due to this mismatch of platforms. The mismatch requires cross-compilers and, the primary issue, dedicated testing hardware.

It is relatively trivial to spin up dozens or hundreds of Linux instances in the...