5 Integrated Design Environments and Toolchains

Alif Semiconductor’s Ensemble fusion processors and microcontrollers are multi-core systems consisting of Arm Cortex-A32 and Arm Cortex-M55 cores. Alif Semiconductor utilizes CMSIS-Pack to distribute peripheral drivers and GitHub for source code distribution. Design can be done using a command line, script-driven flow or an IDE that combines code editing, project build, and debug functions.

If an IDE is used, it should support:

• Arm Cortex-A32 and/or Arm Cortex-M55 CPU cores
• CMSIS-Pack integration for Cortex-M55
• Framework for creating and building a multi-core project
• Framework for secure and non-secure projects

There are various IDEs out on the market which can fulfill these requirements and Alif Semiconductor is supported by many of them, including Visual Studio Code, Arm® Keil® MDK, IAR Embedded Workbench®, and Arm DS.

For a complete step-by-step example of installing the needed development environment and using it to create an Alif Semiconductor Ensemble application and debug it, refer to the respective User Guide Getting Started with Bare Metal Design available on the Alif Semiconductor User Guides & App Notes page.