The quiet revolution in IDEs and compilers

Over the last 20 years or so, a quiet revolution has taken place, led by (many might say) the advent of GCC and other open source software.

Prior to that time, a compiler could set a company back several hundred (if not thousands) of dollars / pounds: now the majority of embedded processor and microcontroller vendors offer completely free solutions that do the job for many (including myself).

I did use a free assembler / linker package from (then) Motorola SPS (downloaded over a BBS, no less, at the amazing rate of 2400 bps) in the early 90s but that was invoked by the command line (although the command line is, on occasion, an absolute necessity).

Oddly, it was Xilinx that rather led the way here in the commercial world; the WebPack tools for their FPGAs were capable (albeit slightly limited) tools for the design and implementation of their devices. You can buy rather expensive tools, but for the majority of designs these are simply not necessary, and this opened the way for hobbyists and professionals who wished to broaden their horizons to delve into these devices. For Xilinx, it must have been a no-brainer as they are in the silicon device business. There is no doubt that one of the reasons they are at the top of the pack was the free availability of development and programming tools (yes, you needed to buy the programmer interface but that was a relatively minor cost).

I was contemplating this today as I downloaded (over a somewhat slow connection) the latest code composer studio from TI. In years gone by (and not that long ago) a paid license was generally required and updates required a subscription fee, but that ceased to be true in 2015.

I have used a number of free IDEs that ship as a complete development system with no limitations, many of which are based on Eclipse (developed by IBM) and the fact of a complete (and free) toolchain for programmable devices now forms part of the decision as to which device to use (silicon vendors take note).

As with Xilinx Vivado, there are tools out there that can be purchased (typically a few thousand dollars) and in some cases this makes a lot of sense as you get support, updates, library fixes and so forth, but for initial development, the advent of free tools has made the market much wider in terms of access for someone with a great idea.

There are tools for Windows (such as CodeBlocks which is cross platform) that integrate with other free tools and libraries to permit the creation of great applications on numerous platforms.

Some microcontroller IDEs still require a paid license for optimisers (such as Microchip) but those numbers are dwindling. The IC vendors are in the business of selling ICs (duh) and if providing a free development suite can increase their sales, then that is what they will ultimately do.

For every expensive package, there is usually something else that will do the job and is free (these companies make money in support and training), such as Scilab which can run many Matlab scripts natively. There are good reasons to use Matlab, but with a single license for a system that has the necessary tools for control systems engineering running at over ￡20k plus annual maintenance, it is beyond the reach of the hobbyist / small business (unless they managed to get a student edition, of course, but that can land people in trouble if they use it commercially). The authors of Scilab are at the same location that Matlab was originally developed and includes some of those original developers, incidentally.

There are times, of course, when it makes a lot of sense to buy an expensive tool suite; in avionics (and particularly safety critical) I really want to know that the toolchain doesn't do unusual things that could cause unwanted (and rather frightening) things to happen when airborne, to name but one application.

So let us all celebrate this quiet revolution that has opened up the electronics market and made it much more a meritocracy rather than limited to those with a few thousand for the requisite software license.