ARM has announced the release of the ARM Development Studio 5 (DS-5) Community Edition (CE) – a free-to-use edition of its reference software development toolkit. The new edition is dedicated to the Android application developer community and helps them create native software for compute intensive tasks that can run up to 4 times faster than Java code. DS-5 CE complements the standard SDK and NDK Android development kits by offering developers a unique set of tools to help them achieve the performance and energy-efficiency advantages made possible when ARM native code is used in Android applications.

DS-5 Community Edition includes limited, but essential functionality from the premium DS-5 toolkit to help solve common Android application developer pain points. It achieves this by providing an integrated graphical debugger for NDK-generated code and visibility of advanced processor information, including ARM NEON Single Instruction Multiple Data (SIMD) registers. The new toolkit permits development of Java and C/C++ code in the same Eclipse integrated development environment (IDE) to maximize productivity and ease of use.

DS-5 Community Edition features a tailored version of the ARM Streamline Performance Analyzer for use with compatible Android development platforms. Streamline captures detailed, system-wide performance statistics from a variety of sources which helps developers to locate hotspots in their code and isolate potential causes. Platform builders can add support for Streamline by integrating an open source driver available from the Linaro website.

The DS-5 CE is available free-of-charge for use by individuals and organizations with annual revenue of $100,000 or less, and up to 10 employees. DS-5 CE is available from ARM and can be downloaded now. For more information go to:


DS-5 CE: http://www.arm.com/ds5community

DS-5: http://www.arm.com/ds5

Brian Bailey – keeping you covered