Virtual engine adds apps to Segger programming tool
Segger in Germany has developed a virtual engine for its flasher programming tool. The move allows users to develop their own customised software for the tool, for example for regionalisation.
“We need to support loads of devices for the flasher,” said Dirk Akemann, partnership marketing director at Segger. “ Currently there are 24,000 configurations that we can support and still that’s not enough and people have to create their own, so we realised we needed more flexibility. For that we created a virtual core running on the flasher.”
“This gives the opportunity to write apps that run on the flasher that control the interface, control the LEDs and other things. This makes it possible to create test and calibration routines and anything that customers think could be useful.”
The emApps software runs on the virtual engine in the flasher tool to support custom configurations. This is discussed with company funder Rolf Segger in a recent podcast, looking at the evolution of development tools.
“emApps is the platform. It’s a processing unit running in the flasher,” said Akemann. “It’s a process in the firmware that is controlled by the real time operating system (RTOS). The virtual core is completely separate from the hardware. It has its own instruction set, its own compiler optimised for code density. This shields the operation of the apps from regular firmware.”
“The software runs on the core of the FPGA, in this case on the ARM A9 AMD FPGA, we can also run it on small processors. The virtual core makes it highly portable,” he said. “A company using emApps needs to install the core inside their own firmware and create a mechanism for how the core can run the apps securely in RAM and then define the API for the system. We have created a toolchain that can be used to create the apps and there will be tools to make it easier over time.”
Segger plans to provide some features to help the development of custom apps.
“We will have a web element productised separately as an app for example for a contract manufacturer who writes an app and makes it available to all their customers to use with the flasher. It’s a piece of binary that you store in the memory and run it from there,” said Akemann. “We think this is an approach that other companies might have use for in other applications, for example in a washing machine for the different wash cycles to update with an app. There’s all kinds of ideas floating around.”
“As we can run the core inside an RTOS we can use the security of that. If there is an MPU present we can use that, and provide a sandbox to a degree. We are exploring all kinds of things and we watch security and we will investigate attack vectors.”
Segger is currently talking to developers about the roll out of the technology n the New Year.
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