Can one IDE help engineers compare thousands of microcontrollers? A multi-architecture platform can now support more than 10,000 MCU variants.
MIKROE has expanded its NECTO Studio IDE to support more than 10,000 microcontrollers from 12 vendors, allowing embedded developers to evaluate different MCU architectures within a common development environment. The company estimates that the platform now covers around half of the approximately 20,000 MCU variants available worldwide.
The multi-architecture approach is intended to simplify MCU evaluation by allowing engineers to work with competing devices without learning separate development environments. This can be useful during architecture selection, prototyping, and projects where hardware requirements change during development.
NECTO Studio provides access to Planet Debug remote board farms, allowing developers to program and debug supported hardware remotely instead of waiting for a physical development board. This can help teams begin software evaluation while hardware is unavailable or shared between developers.
The development environment is accompanied by more than 5,000 ready-to-use libraries covering different embedded applications and peripherals. An AI assistant trained for the platform can generate working code, while NECTO Chat provides access to technical assistance. These capabilities are intended to reduce the time spent setting up development environments, locating software components, and resolving implementation issues.
The wider ecosystem also includes development boards, compilers, programmers and debuggers, smart displays, and more than 1,900 Click peripheral boards. Its hardware and software standards include mikroBUS, mikroSDK, SiBrain, and DISCON, with mikroBUS adopted by more than 100 microcontroller companies and integrated into their development boards.
“We believe there are approximately 20,000 MCU variants available worldwide, meaning we already support around half of the ecosystem,” says Neb Matic, CEO and Founder of MIKROE.
