Network Developers Kit Licensing and Availability for Legacy Releases

From Texas Instruments Embedded Processors Wiki

This topic discusses common licensing and availability questions about TI's NDK (Network Developer's Kit)

Contents 1 How much does NDK cost? 2 Is there support for my application development? 3 Is my board supported? Where is the software located? 4 How is NDK delivered? Does each board have a specific release? Or is there a common version of NDK for all the boards?

How much does NDK cost?

NDK full releases are now free and can be downloaded from Update Advisor website (Target Content Updates -> select Network Developer’s Kit in the menu on the left).

Is there support for my application development?

You can submit issues through TI standard support channels, however these are restricted to the core stack or the examples running in our development boards.

The main reason is because it is virtually impossible to support every combination of client configuration or network topologies available in the marketplace.

Also, to help your development everything but the core stack (up to layer 3) is provided in source code format. This comprises all the example applications, the device drivers, the OS abstraction layer and the nettools (HTML, TFTP, DHCP, Telnet servers and DHCP client).

Additional support information can be found throughout this wiki. Please go to Main Page on the left menu and check the Network Developer's Kit category.

Is my board supported? Where is the software located?

See next question for a complete list of the supported boards and where to find drivers for NDK releases 1.92, 1.93 and 1.94.

For legacy boards and releases supported please see the NDK Product Matrix.PDF.

Due to popularity, please check the NDK FAQ page that talks about support for C672x devices.

How is NDK delivered? Does each board have a specific release? Or is there a common version of NDK for all the boards?

The NDK core stack is completely abstracted from the hardware and therefore compatible between the DSP devices supported below. It is available in object code only and its evaluation versions can be downloaded from the Update Advisor under DSP/BIOS and Target Content Updates -> Network Developer's Kit.

However, another piece of software is also needed: the EMAC device driver package, called NDK Support Package (NSP) or Platform Support Package (PSP). The NSPs and PSPs contain the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL), the low-level device drivers and the example CCS projects for the evaluation boards - all source code.

The NSPs are available at the Update Advisor under DSP/BIOS and Target Content Updates -> Network Developer's Kit and support:

• TMDSDSK6455
• TMDXEVM6455
• TMDSEVM642

PSPs are included in the development board software packages and at the Update Advisor under DSP/BIOS and Target Content Updates -> Processor Support Packages (PSP) -> DSP/BIOS-based Platform Support. These support the following boards:

• TMDSVDP6437
• TMDSEVM6424
• TMDXEVM6452
• TMDXDVP648

The current NSPs available at the Update Advisor page support NDK 1.92, 1.93 and 1.94 and are packaged in compressed tar files as NDK Support Package. These files must be de-compressed to the user's %NDK_INSTALL_DIR%\packages folder, placing several files under src, lib and example subfolders.

The PSPs available at the Update Advisor page also support NDK 1.92, 1.93 and 1.94 and are packaged in compressed tar files inside the BIOS PSP main file. These files must be de-compressed to the user's %NDK_INSTALL_DIR% folder; this will create a subfolder called ti.ndk.platforms.dm648 (or the board of your choice) and it is highly advisable to copy its contents to %NDK_INSTALL_DIR%\packages to avoid path conflicts. Similarly to the NSPs, this will place several files under src, lib and example subfolders.

Documentation is also available under docs subfolder, which contains additional information about the device driver implementation.

The NSPs and PSPs are provided 'as-is' and any changes and/or adaptations to custom hardware are unsupported (it's impossible to support every single combination of EMAC/PHYs in the marketplace).

Updated! Notes for NDK 1.94:

1. Starting with this release, everything is provided in source code except the core stack (up to layer 3). Therefore all the example applications, the device drivers, the OS abstraction layer and the nettools (HTML, TFTP, DHCP, Telnet servers and DHCP client) are provided in source code.
2. The NDK 1.94 NSP packages create their own trees under %NDK_INSTALL_DIR%\packages named dm642 and dsk6455.
3. This new NSP only provides support for the new NIMU device driver architecture. The NDK 1.92 NSP packages that use the legacy llPacket device driver architecture are fully compatible with NDK 1.94.
4. The example projects provided with the NDK 1.94 NSP will fail to load and build properly. This is because they require modifications to use the new NIMU device driver architecture. Please see section 1.2 of the NSP User's Guide for your platform: C6455 or DM642.

Updated! Notes for NDK 1.94.01:

1. The only practical difference of this release is to fix an issue with the big endian versions of the libraries provided with NDK 1.94. No functional changes were added.
2. The only changes made to the NSPs for NDK 1.94.01 are intended to keep the compatibility with previous releases. They are installed back to the %NDK_INSTALL_DIR%\packages\ti\examples directory and the llPacket() libraries have the default names (i.e., the library <os_ll.lib> provided in NSP for NDK 1.94 was renamed back to &ltos.lib>)

Leave a Comment