Free design tools and low cost board prototyping means development kits do not necessarily have to be the inevitable starting point for many designs,writes Mark Cundle,head of technical marketing at RS Components.
Experience tells us that the development kit offers an excellent starting point for an embedded project.But is it always the case?I'm reminded of the humorous truism about asking for directions and being politely informed it was best not to set off from here.Development kits have been,and still are,good for producing a first prototype for many designs.In conjunction with an embedded software development environment,a configuration of a small constellation of components and a knot of wires,development kits have enabled designers to create at least an approximation of the target end product.There is also no doubt that a kit is a highly useful tool in the selection of the system processor or microcontroller.Kits are usually based on the most popular and widely available MCUs;clearly,surety of supply is very important,and choosing an MCU that is reaching end of life can be a significant risk.Kits allow engineers to achieve a quick proof-of-concept design,ensuring that the MCU delivers the required performance and confirming that the communication channels all operate,while concurrently running the execution program;or to explore if an idea can work using a low-cost FPGA.Naturally,enthusiastic champions of development kits are often those software-oriented developers who prefer not to involve themselves in PCB layout.PCB design problems can be difficult and expensive to troubleshoot.So with a kit,to an extent at least,the developer benefits from the removal of hardware from the embedded design equation and allows them to concentrate on their core competence–writing code.However,for many companies that develop electronic hardware,typically the layout will need to come before software development.This can introduce a large element of risk and cost,as hardware designers will need to develop a prototype that has to be highly functional,otherwise it cannot be debugged.However,a significant reduction in the cost of board prototyping over the years has made it progressively competitive,and increasingly developers have found a very serious alternative.It has allowed them to deliver an initial hardware design,including processor,memory,peripherals and power management,and have it prototyped in low volume at their local PCB shop at decreasing levels of cost.The result is that developers can use this prototype as a first iteration of their design,and it becomes the development kit.The board will be significantly closer to the end product than can be achieved by the use of an off-the-shelf kit and should lead to further improved designs that are primarily bug-fixed iterations of the first.In addition to the cost reduction of custom-made boards,there has been a strong upsurge in the availability of free and increasingly functional board design tools and test software,in addition to the widening availability of open-source software,including operating systems,design templates and code libraries.There is also a proliferation of open-source hardware designs and IP,where for example a potentially troublesome high-speed memory interface can be reused,in conjunction with easily downloadable software stacks and drivers.Increasingly,developers are no longer being forced to use a'plain vanilla'standard board,including various kit-vendor selected components,which attempts to meet all customer needs.Or to tolerate a shortage of suitable peripherals in common kit configurations,making them inadequate for those developing more specialised applications.There has been,arguably,a gradual and inexorable shift in the raison d'être of the development kit and it must adapt to survive in changing market conditions.One highly significant consequence has been the price of kits dropping significantly from thousands to tens of pounds.Many kits now also include many more resources,including specific software tools that integrate into freely available IDEs,and basic design libraries to help speed up the design process.The MCU,processor and FPGA manufacturers are also increasingly offering kits with hardware reference designs and specific software stacks tailored to more application-specific requirements–which can provide a very low cost and fast development option for engineers–such as a digital-video development platform as just one example of many.Semiconductor suppliers work hard to build up their respective design communities to develop brand loyalty and increase engagement with engineers.These communities are helping to pool developer information,offering free online software tools and other software and IP resources,in addition to providing online support and discussion forums that encourage engineers to share ideas and troubleshoot problems,which can help speed development.Even with all this increased differentiation and functionality,in conjunction with a greatly extended support ecosystem,development kits do not necessarily have to be the inevitable starting point for many designs.
