Atmel launches integrated app store and collaboration workspace

The folks at Atmel Corporation say that they've further simplied the software design process for embedded MCU designers with the introduction of Atmel Gallery, an app store for development tools and embedded software that evolves Atmel Studio 6 into a comprehensive integrated development platform (IDP). The guys and gals at Atmel say that they are the first company to bring the convenience of an app store to the embedded MCU community.

While MCU designers are under increasing pressure to develop highly differentiated, innovative and complex products in far less time than ever before, engineering resources and project times are not being increased. Growingly, software is used to differentiate end-customer products, from smartphones to industrial controls. Yet, traditional software development environments have not evolved in any meaningful way to accommodate the new realities of the designers’ world. To shorten the design cycles for their differentiated products, designers today need a comprehensive IDP that provides easy access to all the necessary tools and embedded software they require, such as compilers, advanced debugging and analysis tools, real-time-operating systems and communication stacks.

Atmel Gallery is built directly into the Atmel Studio 6 development environment and is also available via the web at gallery.atmel.com to provide easy access to free and commercial extensions for Atmel Studio including development tools such as compilers, peripheral configuration, code editing and code analysis. To support the development of Atmel MCUs, solutions are available now through the Atmel Gallery from third-party partners including HP Info Tech, Keil (a division of ARM Holdings), Percepio, Red Lizard and Symnum Systems to help shorten their design time.


For instance, FreeRTOS, a popular real-time embedded operating system (OS), is now integrated into the Atmel Software Framwork and available through Atmel Gallery to give  designers easy access to use real-time OS capabilities in their MCU designs. Atmel will continue to include additional partner solutions into Atmel Gallery, including RTOS solutions such as Micrium’s popular µC/OS real-time kernels and µC/Probe data visualization tool  and rapid prototyping tools such as Proteus VSM from Labcenter Electronics for hardware/software co-simulation, with many more to come.

Atmel also launched Atmel Spaces, a cloud-based collaboration workspace for hosting software and hardware projects targeting Atmel MCUs. Atmel Spaces makes it easy for the MCU design community to collaborate, resulting in a rapidly growing community of developed tools and embedded software for Atmel MCUs. Available at spaces.atmel.com, Atmel Spaces provides all the tools to make collaborative development easy, including access control, version control system, bug and feature trackers, mailing lists and wikis. Projects hosted on Atmel Spaces are accessible directly from Studio 6.

“Embedded designers require a new type of development platform, one that helps meet the exploding software requirements in their MCU designs. Easy access to all their tool and software needs is key for enabling them to meet their challenging project timelines,” said Joerg Bertholdt, director of marketing, MCU tools and software, Atmel Corporation. “Atmel Gallery and Atmel Spaces evolve Studio 6 in ways that do just that. Now, designers can take advantage of the same easy-to-use environment to satisfy all their tools and software needs with the opportunity to collaborate with other engineers.”

Availability    
Available free of charge, Atmel Studio 6 can be downloaded by Clicking Here. Atmel Gallery and Atmel Spaces are directly accessible through Atmel Studio 6 or at gallery.atmel.com and spaces.atmel.com. Atmel Studio supports development for Atmel AVR and SAM ARM-based Cortex-M-based Flash MCUs.

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