Developer experience enriched with a new era of productivity

Update: March 21, 2023

NXP Semiconductors has released the new MCUXpresso toolset, offering new tools and resources that provide developers with improved scalability, usability and portability, making it simpler and quicker to develop complex embedded applications. The new toolset extends on current features with new IDE offerings, including a custom-built MCUXpresso extension for Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code, open-source-based hardware abstraction for code reuse, streamlined partner code delivery employing Open-CMSIS-Packs, and a new Application Launch Pad for straightforward, interactive access to application software and documentation from the company.

The developer experience is foundational to efficient, swift and innovative product development. New and experienced developers profit from the flexibility to select the best software and tools for their projects. By investing in open-source communities that support quicker development and time to market and making it easier for its partners to bring their specialised software to developers, the company’s new toolset provides the power of choice software developers require for rapid innovation.

“Today’s developers want more choices and open-source options rather than being locked into proprietary systems,” said Charles Dachs, senior vice president and general manager, Industrial and IoT Edge, NXP. “The new MCUXpresso toolset gives developers greater flexibility and control of their journey, delivering the tools and resources they need to easily accelerate software development. By expanding access to open-source communities and simplifying integration of specialised partner software, we’re helping developers drive innovation, scale their projects, bring complex products to market faster, and easily migrate between NXP devices and platforms.”

The new toolset offers the newly released MCUXpresso for VS Code, developed for fast and responsive source-code editing. This new IDE will improve flexibility by extending build system choices, including those favoured by open-source projects, including Zephyr and Matter, while maintaining support for developers utilising the traditional MCUXpresso SDK. Developers can also access existing IDE options, including MCUXpresso IDE, IAR Embedded Workbench and Arm Keil development tools.

The new toolset delivers a comprehensive, one-stop shop for embedded ecosystem integration. The toolset will offer a HAL that simplifies code reuse and portability within its wide microcontroller portfolio. All IDEs in the ecosystem feature Open-CMSIS-Pack support for code delivery, which allows ecosystem partners to notably streamline the product evaluation and integration process for customers, allowing the developers to browse a collection of off-the-shelf software easily. A new application launch pad also serves as a central repository for application design resources, including application software packs, application notes and application code examples, with an intuitive portal to browse available software.