Embedded Studio 4.10 for ARM reduces binary size

By Nick Flaherty www.flaherty.co.uk

SEGGER has added a new Linker and Link-Time Optimization (LTO) to the latest release build of their its cross-platform integrated development environments, Embedded Studio for ARM and Embedded Studio for Cortex-M.

The new product version provides a significant 5-12% reduction over the previous version on typical applications, and even higher gains compared to conventional GCC tool chains. These savings are the result of the new LTO, combined with SEGGER’s Linker and Run-time library emLib-C. Through LTO, it is possible to optimise the entire application, opening the door for optimisation opportunities that are simply not available to the compiler.

A smaller executable can get the same thing done with less program memory (Flash), resulting in the ability to use smaller microcontrollers and potential cost savings.

The Linker adds features such as compression of initialised data and deduplication, as well as the flexibility of dealing with fragmented memory maps that embedded developers have to cope with. Like all SEGGER software, it is written from scratch for use in deeply embedded computing systems. Additionally, the size required by the included runtime library is significantly lower than that of runtime libraries used by most GCC tool chains.

“Our engineers have done an outstanding job! This new release of Embedded Studio for ARM and Cortex-M devices allows flash size savings on a scale I never thought possible," says Dirk Akemann, Marketing Manager at SEGGER Microcontroller. "Embedded Studio is becoming more and more popular, and we are proud to support the educational community by having Embedded Studio available free of charge for non-commercial use.”

Get more information on the new SEGGER Embedded Studio at: http://www.segger.com/embedded-studio.html

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