hi guys
i m an ece student and i have done my project in embedded systems. in that i have AT89S52 micro controller and the software used is keil micro vision. now i have a question whether the keil software and embedded c is platform independent or dependent. please help me
Hello JAHNAVI, Tools like this are always designed to operate on as many processors as possible, so they're platform-independent, but at some point they need to be able to support specific processors, so they include libraries to support these specifics. The C language, if it's ANSI C, is absolutely platform independent, but many compilers add processor-specific things, or deviate from ANSI-C as needed to make embedded work more efficient. Dan
With compilers, there are (at least) two platforms involved:
1. The Host plaform = the platform on which the compiler itself runs;
2. The Target plaform = the platform on which the generated code runs.
When the Host & Target platforms are the same, the compiler is called a Native compiler; When the Host & Target platforms differ, the compiler is called a Cross-compiler.
Keil compilers are all cross-compilers: they run on Windows hosts, and generate code for other Targets.
As they don't run on non-Windows platforms, they are platform-dependent in that sense.
Similarly, each Keil compiler generates code for only a specific "family" of target architectures - so they are also platform-dependent in that sense.
But Keil C51 generates code for any Target using the 8051 architecture; it is not confined to any specific 8051-based target - so it is platform-independent in that sense! Similarly for the other toolsets.