March 6, 2012 -- Despite the widespread use of high-level operating systems and software in the embedded space, many developers must take a low-level, hands-on approach to meet the strict requirements of real-time systems. In extreme cases, even a real-time operating system (RTOS) may represent unacceptable overhead. Even in more forgiving applications, developers often need low-level software to facilitate using a full OS with a particular embedded platform.

StarterWare is a set of lightweight, OS-independent software libraries and utilities that enable bare-metal development on TI's ARM, ARM + DSP, and DSP-only embedded devices. This article will describe the contents of StarterWare and how they can be used for complete application development with minimal overhead and maximum hardware access. It also explores how StarterWare can be used in conjunction with an OS to add functionality to an existing application without assuming complete control of the overall system.

By Joseph Coombs. (Coombs is an applications engineer at Texas Instruments, Inc. for the TMS320C6000 Digital Signal Processor (DSP) business.)