Hello,
Can anyone clearify what the difference are in Keil MDK and Arm realview dev.suite?
Kasper
**** This is not an authoritative answer ****
It is *much* easier to get a standard MCU up and running using MDK!
RVDS is a bare-bones tool chain. In a way comparable to GCC being a bare-bones tool chain. Both are focussed on target architecture, not on actual devices. In RVDS you have to write your own device/board support package. RVDS cleary targets vendor specific SoCs, not so much off-the-shelf MCUs. It is, of course, possible to use RVDS for MCU development.
Both, MDK and RVDS sue the same underlying compiler technology. Generated code is very similar[1] for the same CPU if the same compiler version is used.
RVDS supports high end ARM architectures, such as v6 and v7-A/R. This is turned off for MDK at this point. I am sure that when deemed strategically useful, that it will be merely a compiler switch to enable this when rebuilding MDK's version of armcc.
The RealView Debugger supports multi-core debugging. I provides a well documented system for adding new device/board descriptions. None of these features are required by most MCU customers.
RVDS uses an IDE based on Eclipse. A nice gimmick is the scatter file editor with syntax highlighting and a graphical view!
MDK simulates the actual device, RVD only the core itself[2].
RVDS Pro includes an incredible profiling tool.
RVDS is available for Linux. The Windows version of RVDS comes with a "make" utility.
Building Linux applications with RVDS is a supported flow.
Did I mention this: It is *much* easier to get a standard MCU up and running using MDK!
Regards Marcus http://www.doulos.com/arm/
Footnotes: [1] The only reason I don't say "identical" is that I don't have hard evidence to back this up.
[2] Well, not quite: The simulators in RVDS do include some commodity peripherals (UART, timer) but are not modelling a standard MCU.