In response to our recently announced Wall of Boards at the ARM booth at Embedded World 2016, we had an inquiry from Twitter about the availability of ARM Cortex-R development boards.
Of all the ARM processors, the Cortex-R are probably the least known. They are more performant than Cortex-M, but with provision for deterministic interrupt response, error correction and a variety of other features that match them to the specific constraints of hard real-time systems. In application terms, this means they find their way into deeply embedded devices like cellular modems, hard drive disk controllers, automotive braking systems and the like.
These applications means that Cortex-R development boards are not always as easy to come by, but I talked to some of our in-house experts (I'm talking about you, jont) to compile this short list. Hopefully it is of some use to any hard-realtime engineers out there. This is by no means exhaustive, and if you know of any others, feel free to add to the comments!
To be more accurate the list price is $19.99 for LaunchPads using Cortex-R4F and $29.99 for LaunchPads using Cortex-R5F. A direct link to Hercules LaunchPads is here, TI LaunchPad - Hercules ARM Cortex-R MCU LaunchPads.
TI also has LaunchPads for the Cortex-R4, Cortex-R4F and Cortex-R5F in the $19-$29 range.
TI LaunchPad Development Ecosystem
Look under Hercules for Cortex-R.