August 2015
8
T
OOLS
& S
OFTWARE
Assignment View.
e latter, for instance, pro-
vides a clear graphical depiction of the manual
pin assignment on the selected package.
One of the measures to improve the reuse
of the so ware and components available in
DAVE was the introduction of a static device
driver layer known as XMC Lib. It is subor-
dinated to the DAVE APPs, but can also be
used independently of DAVE APPs or DAVE
in standard third-party development environ-
ments. Both XMC Lib and DAVE APPs with
the graphical user interface o er optimized
so ware components that allow the user to
program quickly and with hardware abstrac-
tion. e new XMC Lib so ware layer means
that the DAVE APPs do not access the micro-
controller registers and peripherals registers
directly, but instead use the applicable XMC
Lib API. is not only increases reusability; it
also improves the clarity and readability of the
source code generated. To further improve
readability, scalability, and reusability, users
can also freely de ne user labels for the DAVE
APP instance in question. User labels serve
as handlers (a pointer to the object) that let
DAVE APP methods (APIs) to be applied
to the desired DAVE APP instance. DAVE
contains a resource solver that allows users to
easily program even complex applications on
or near the hardware level by means of graphi-
cal con gurations and combinations of DAVE
APPs and XMC Lib. Here, the developer rst
de nes the necessary resources logically
(virtually) in the DAVE APP.
e resource solver then assigns the logical
resources to the physical hardware resources
of the respectivemicrocontroller. e resource
solver follows the constraint logic program-
ming method while doing so. Based on
this, DAVE generates an easily readable and
comprehensively documented source code
that includes header les, the initialization
code, and the actual functions that In neon
provides for further license-free use.
With the new, additional So ware Develop-
ment Kit – the DAVE SDK – the user now
can modify and expand existing DAVE APPs
and also develop completely new ones.
e
users can thus construct their own mod-
ular so ware repository. DAVE SDK is an
independent Eclipse instance that is part of
the DAVE installation package.
is allows
the expansion of the features DAVE APPs
have to o er – for example, the addition of
communication stacks that the developer
can simply incorporate into the application.
In principle, DAVE SDK can also be used
without XMC microcontroller resource de -
nition. For example, static libraries of any
kind can be con gured using a graphic user
Figure 2. DAVE abstracts from concrete peripheral modules. e combination of XMC Lib,
DAVE SDK, DAVE APPs, and complete examples facilitates the writing of the users own
programs for XMC microcontrollers
Figure 3. Typical development process: DAVE
and commercial ARM development tools
work hand in hand
