Multi-Core Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) with FreeRTOS

Maybe you are using a multi-core device in your projects, but have not tapped into multi-core usage yet? FreeRTOS V11.0 is out, and the big news is that it has finally Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) integrated into the mainline. This greatly simplifies FreeRTOS usage, as I finally can use the same RTOS for my SMP targets and boards, and I can easily switch between single-core and multi-core applications.

Dual-Core Boards running with FreeRTOS
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Debug Probes for RP2040 with VS Code

For systematic debugging, an engineer needs a debug probe. For the Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2040) device there are plenty of debug options with VS Code.

In this article I show different options, from professional tools to DIY solutions and the settings in VS Code I’m using.

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Open Source picoLink: Raspberry Pi RP2040 CMSIS-DAP Debug Probe

One essential part of embedded development is the ability to debug the target application. The good thing with the Raspberry Pi Pico RP2040 Eco-system is: One can use another RP2040 Pico board as a debug probe to debug other ARM Cortex-M devices.

But instead using a Raspberry Pi Pico board with some wires, why not building a dedicated board? The result is a small, versatile and open source debugging probe which virtually can debug any ARM Cortex-M device as a standard ARM CMSIS-DAP probe:

picoLink Debug Probe debugging a Raspberry Pi Pico Board
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