Software development tools and the TMS320C6678 EVM

Summary

This chapter explains the development tools, the evaluation module (EVM) and the provided laboratory exercises demonstrating the capabilities of the code composer studio (CCS) and EVMs. Development tools can be divided into hardware and software development tools. Texas Instruments (TI) provides an advanced integrated software and hardware development toolset. The software development tools consist of the following modules: the C‐compiler, assembler, linker, simulator and code converter. The chapter describes the software development tools that are required for testing the applications. Although for time‐critical applications assembly is the most efficient language, the optimising C compiler for the TMS320C66x processors can achieve performances exceeding 70% compared with code written in assembly. The various object files which constitute an application are all combined by the linker to produce a single executable file. As with all embedded systems, the command file is indispensable for real‐time applications.