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I'm trying to understand the differences between Arm Development Studio 2025.0 Pro and Arm Keil MDK v6 Pro

Michael Stickland

I'm evaluating which Arm Development Platform to choose for an embedded microcontroller development project.

So far as I can tell, other than available IDE GUI environments and OS requirements, it seems like one of the main advertised difference is (may be) that the Arm Keil MDK v6 Professional system supports the Arm CMSIS Solution (Arm FuSa RTS, FuSa RTX RTOS, FuSa CMSIS-Core, and FuSa event recorder for RTOS awareness and event tracking) and the Arm CMSIS Debugger.

Is this actually the main difference between the two?

Does Arm Development Studio also support all the CMSIS Solution and CMSIS Debugger stuff?

Are there other differences I should consider before choosing which one to purchase a license for?

Are there other Arm IDEs I should consider?

Thank you...

  • 0 Arm Employee Badge

    Hi Michael,

    As a general rule, if you are working with a microcontroller supported by Keil MDK, then that would be the better solution for you. It also has better support for the RTX RTOS.

    https://www.keil.arm.com/devices/

    Arm Development Studio is a more general tool, supporting all Arm processors (Keil MDK is Cortex-M only), typically used with multi-processor, Cortex-A based devices. It does also have CMSIS support, but this is not as extensive as within MDK.

  • 0 in reply to Ronan Synnott

    Hi Ronan,

    Thanks for your reply! Is Keil MDK the IDE to use if we don't end up using a RTOS i.e., developing to bare metal?

    Thanks,

    Michael

  • +1 Arm Employee Badge in reply to Michael Stickland

    RTOS support is one of several features that are better supported in MDK.

    It also has support for Event Recorder, and likely has better device specific support (provided by the MCU vendor). Certain features such as power profiling with ulinkPlus are only supported with MDK.

    You have not said which MCU you are considering, but MDK also has better integration into tools such as STM32Cube, vendor supplied tools for configuring their devices.

    MDK use case is specifically for embedded developers using MCUs, whereas Arm Development Studio is more commonly used by the companies developing the MCU (and other Arm based SoCs), or by developers using Cortex-A or Cortex-R based devices (MDK is specifically focused on Cortex-M).

    Both use the same compiler and so code size etc should be the same.

    If the device you are using is supported by MDK, then that is almost certainly the better solution.