Please note that these ColdFire tools for older processors are no longer supported. See here for our current range.
The ColdFire® "Variable-Length RISC" architecture is
derived from the original Motorola 680x0 family, but with a simplified set of
instructions and addressing modes to provide high performance at low
cost and low power consumption. (If you are interested in the
technical details, see our summary
of the differences between ColdFire and the 680x0 family).
This means that programs written for the 680x0 family will not run on ColdFire processors without modification or re-compiling. To assist in the migration of 680x0 code to ColdFire, MicroAPL and Freescale Semiconductor (now NXP) have worked together to offer you two solutions:
- PortAsm/68K for ColdFire is a source-level translation tool which is designed to help you port 680x0 assembly-language programs to ColdFire. It can be used to target any member of the ColdFire family, provides good performance, and is the recommended solution for porting a large body of 680x0 assembler code where you have access to the original source-code files.
- CF68KLib is an emulation library which provides exception handlers to implement those 680x0 instuctions and addressing modes which are missing in the ColdFire architecture. It thus allows 680x0 object-code (whether written in assembler or in a high-level language) to run on a ColdFire processor (Version 3 core or later only). It is available to run either user-level code only, or user- and supervisor-level code. CF68KLib allows you to run 680x0 code with minimal modification under ColdFire, although there is a performance penalty associated with the need to trap out and emulate missing instructions.
And, best of all, thanks to a special agreement between MicroAPL and Freescale Semiconductor, PortAsm/68K for ColdFire and CF68KLib are both available for download free of charge! Just click here to download full, unrestricted version of these products, together with full documentation. (Usage of the software is subject to the PortAsm/68Kfor ColdFire license agreement or CF68KLib license agreement, as appropriate).
Other porting options
As well as these options for ColdFire, MicroAPL offers a range of solutions and services for porting your legacy 680x0 code to other architectures or to C. We have versions of PortAsm which translate 68K code to run on the POWER and 80x86 architectures, as well as emulators allowing 68K code to run with minimal porting effort on the POWER, ARM, x86 and MIPS architectures.