Does Freescale plan on providing the CMSIS files for their Kinetis series of microcontrollers?

[justinsayres]

I am trying to use Keils simulator to debug code without the hardware but the peripherals for Freescale MCUs are not supported because Keil does not have the appropriate CMSIS files required to simulate peripherals.  This simulation would be a great tool to have.  Anyone know what Freescale is planning on doing?

Thanks,
Justin

[chris_brown]

Hi Justin,

I don't have much experience with the simulator in KEIL but I think Freescale provides everything you should need.  You should be able to find whatever files you need from the KEIL device pages (MDK5 Device List).  If not, can you please specify what files you need?

Thanks,

Chris

[justinsayres]

Thanks, I just got a reply from Arm support and they informed me that Keil will no longer be supporting simulation on new devices because ETM trace can provide everything(they didn't understand that not all Cortex devices they sold have ETM-M0 has MTB).  But the reason I really wanted it was so I could test out my firmware before I got the hardware.

[mjbcswitzerland · Accepted solution]

Hi Justin

For simulation check out also the following: Having fun with the FRDM-K25Z  and Re: New Freedom FRDM-K64F board

I simulate almost all peripherals of the Kinetis (most in near to real time) so that complete projects can be fully tested and the simulated Kinetis interacts with other devices (eg. via Ethernet or UART/COM ports) or using a script file (USB and almost all others). It handles all interrupts and DMA and things like I2C peripheral devices, or SPI Flash as well as SD cards.

This can reduce project development, debug and maintenance times dramatically (it also allows playing back Wireshark Ethernet recordings to recreate Ethernet situations for the field to be debugged). The simulators as incorperated in Keil, IAR etc. are only really of use for analysing small parts of code when things like instruction cycle counts are needed and less so for actual general embedded application development/debugging.

There are a few videos showing it in operation - eg.

K40_SLCD.wmv - YouTube (SLCD simulation)

FlexCAN.wmv - YouTube (dual CAN simulation - connecting the simulated Kinetis to a real CAN bus)

cf-tower_0003.wmv - YouTube (TFT simulation)

The videos show operation on both real Kinetis/Coldfire HW and in the simulator so that the real time behaviour can be seen more or less side-by-side.

The following document is a tutorial for EThernet simulation http://www.utasker.com/docs/KINETIS/uTaskerV1.4_Kinetis.pdf (some Ethernet simulation is seen also in the videos)

ETM trace is valuable for complex debugging but may be needed only once or twice in a year [unless the developer is prone to making lots of complex boo-boos] (or course simpler methods usually solve them too but with a little more effort and patience). Application level simulation can be used for 95% of real development and accelerates almost all aspects of projects.

Regards

Mark

[BlackNight]

Hi Justin,

I'm not clear on which CMSIS files you need? If it is about CMSIS SVD files, then see http://mcuoneclipse.com/2014/06/13/embsys-registers-view-supporting-dimelementgroup-of-cmsis-svd/

Erich

[bosleymusic_com]

CMSIS is not a Kinetis specific item.

It stands for Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard and is cross platform compatible. Read below:

CMSIS - Cortex Microcontroller Software Interface Standard - ARM