Kinetis SDK vs PEx vs MQX BSP

[kenansun]

Hi,

Comparing with the existing driver lib or toolkit PEx and MQX BSP, what advantages does the new Kinetis SDK have?

Or what fatal shortcomings does PEx or MQX BSP have for current designing and what is the cause that lets Freescale create a all new toolkit instead of improving those it already has?

Thanks!

[kenansun]

Hi Mac,

Thank you for your helpful answer:smileyhappy:

But I've still got several questions:

1. When you are talking about "it will still be configurable with PEx and ... MQX BSPs that use it", does that mean the new Kinetis SDK will be merged into PEx or MQX ecosystem, so everything that we should do is just like updating PEx or MQX, in order to make it also possible to use Kinetis SDK?
2. I really appreciate the visualization features of PEx, which make everything easy and intuitive. Will the new Kinetis SDK come with these features?

Many thanks!

[mnorman]

I would say that the HAL and drivers in the Kinetis SDK are going to be the new software foundation for all other software products.  Processor Expert is still a key tool for Kinetis application development, we've just shifted from generating drivers with PEx (logical device drivers, LDDs) to generating configuration data for pre-existing drivers.  This allows users to choose if they want to use PEx or not. PEx will still be capable of generating low-level initialization code (e.g. for quick configuration right out of reset), pin multiplexing functions, clock configurations and other BSP related software.  It still offers a nice GUI for peripheral drive configuration as well - the user experience is identical to generating LDDs, the difference is that the underlying driver software isn't changing and PEx is creating configuration data structures used to initialize the peripherals instead.

The Kinetis SDK already has a operating system abstraction (OSA) with support for MQX, FreeRTOS and uC/OS-II(-III).  We will be expanding the support to additional RTOSs also.  In this regard, you can think of the Kinetis SDK as the source of the BSP.

-Michael

[macl · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Great questions.  Here is my perspective.  There is no fatal shortcomings to Processor Expert (PEx) or MQX BSPs or the example/sample software Freescale provides.  What we are planning is to converge our Kinetis software onto the new Kinetis SDK to be a common platform that will be much more flexible, and easier to maintain and improve.  The result should be that the initialization and driver code will be more portable, there should be more higher quality example applications and drivers, it should be more intuitive, and it will still be configurable with PEx, and you will still have full featured and fully tested MQX RTOS BSPs that use it.  Also other RTOS will be able to use the SDK platform for anyone who wants to use them.  We understand that customers will need to port applications to the new platform or adapt it to specific needs, however we are very confident that this new platform is a step in the right direction.  Feedback so far has been very positive.  We will continue to adapt and mature it so your feedback is very much appreciated.

Thanks,

Mac L

(Freescale MQX RTOS Product Manager)