Which compiler should be used for porting C code to ARM?

Question

I am new to ARM. I have written C code,but I'm looking to port the code to ARM which runs on all ARM processors. I am going to develop high end applications such as those which run on smartphones/ tablets. Can you guys tell which is the best compiler for that? I have heard about RVDS, but that seems to be expensive.

My other question is: Can I use Microsoft Visual studio 2008 to program ARM Intrinsic like Neon? Are there any other alternatives for RVDS?

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Several version of the gcc toolchain are available for ARM processors. You need to figure out the exact target for your code such as:

• Which processor or set of processors ? What instruction sets and extensions are supported ? (There are many like ARMv6, ARMV7, ARMv7a). Some of them might have NEON support and some might not.
• What kind of FPU support - hard FP vs soft FP ?
• What kind of OS environment ? Linux ? Android ? Bare metal ?
• Which C library - glibc, uclibc, bionic libc or something else ?

The last 2 are kind of built into the toolchain and cannot be modified. But choosing the exact instruction set and optimization can be controlled using ARM specific -m flags in gcc.

And distros like Ubuntu already have the ARM toolchain as part of their repos. You can give that a try too :

sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabi