IAR Systems updates development tools for the ultra-low-power MSP430 core from Texas Instruments

IAR Systems introducesd a new version of its world-leading development tool suite IAR Embedded Workbench® for the ultra-low power 16-bit MSP430 microcontrollers. In addition to new libraries and integrations, support for numerous new devices has been added. For the latest version, 5.60, the TI Math Library for MSP430 has been integrated into IAR Embedded Workbench. The included floating-point routines can be used in computationally intensive real-time applications where optimal execution speed is critical. By using these routines instead of the routines found in the existing run-time-support libraries, developers can gain increased performance in any application that use floating point scalar math, without rewriting existing code. IAR Embedded Workbench for MSP430 now also includes prebuilt libraries with multithread support. A flexible mechanism for invoking external analyzers for project files is introduced. The functionality is typically used as an interface to static analysis tools like PC-lint. The new intuitive integration simplifies development for customers using external analysis tools and makes it easy to use these tools together with IAR Embedded Workbench. Further simplifying integration with external tools, custom argument variables can now be used in IAR Embedded Workbench. The custom argument variables can be used as macro-like expansions that depend on the current context. This new functionality is useful for example when sending arguments to an external build tool. IAR Embedded Workbench for MSP430 is a complete set of powerful and reliable tools for building and debugging embedded systems based on the ultra-low-power 16-bit MSP430 microcontroller family from Texas Instruments. IAR Embedded Workbench provides a highly-optimizing C/C++ compiler and a user-friendly IDE including project manager, editor, build tools and debugger. It also integrates TI's power-optimization teaching tool ULP Advisor software that uses a static code analyzer to offer tips and tricks to help developers understand where they can improve their code to minimize power consumption. IAR Embedded Workbench