Leading microcontroller vendor STMicroelectronics NV (Geneva, Switzerland) is joining the mbed community, which collaboratively develops with ARM-based microcontrollers.
The mbed community is managed by ARM and was started by two ARM engineers in 2005 to provide open source support for rapid prototyping and product development with a focus on the Internet of Things. The project is notable for providing free online development support and C/C++ compiler.
The project started with boards carrying NXP microcontrollers. NXP was an early adopter of the Cortex-M3 architecture for MCUs and another Cortex-M3 adopter, Freescale Semiconductors added its support to the project in February 2013.
"We are very pleased to announce that we're working with ST on enabling STM32 microcontrollers in mbed," Simon Ford, director of IoT platforms at ARM, told mbed community members through its website.
The first mbed-enabled STM32 development boards will be launched in February 2014, and support for other boards and targets will follow, ARM said without indicating which STM32 microcontrollers would come first. ST has MCUs based on Cortex-M4 as well as Cortex-M3 and Cortex-M0.
The agreement with ST will give developers working with ST's Cortex-M based microcontrollers within the STM32 range, free access to mbed software, development tools and online collaboration platform.
"The mbed project is bringing together leading technology companies to create a step change in productivity for embedded device development," said Ford, in a statement issued by ARM. "We have learnt from the web and smartphone revolutions that by building an open-source software platform with reusable software components and free development and collaboration tools, we can enable the creation of IoT and smart devices on a previously unimagined scale."
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